Methods for using artificial polynucleotides and compositions thereof to reduce transgene silencing

ABSTRACT

The materials and methods disclosed provide for polynucleotide molecules sufficiently divergent from polynucleotides naturally contained in plants, or polynucleotides previously introduced into plants as transgenes to permit trait stacking in plant breeding methods or plant transformation methods. The disclosure also provides for methods and compositions to detect the polynucleotides of the invention in plants.

This application is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 13/035,898, filed Feb. 25, 2011, which application is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 12/589,141, filed Oct. 19,2009, now issued as U.S Pat. No. 7,979,321 which application is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/521,288 filed Jan. 14, 2005, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,615,678, which is a National Stage Entry of PCT/US03/21551, filed on Jul. 10, 2003, which application claims benefit of priority of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/396,665, filed Jul. 18, 2002, the entire disclosure of all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

INCORPORATION OF SEQUENCE LISTING

A computer readable form of the sequence listing is contained in the file named “MONS270USD3_ST25.txt” which is 55.8 kb (measured in MS-Windows) and was created on Sep. 16, 2013, which is filed herewith and herein incorporated by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to plant genetic engineering. More particularly, to a method for constructing an artificial polynucleotide and methods of use to reduce transgene silencing in plants. The invention also relates to the plant cells containing the artificial polynucleotide in which a plant cell is transformed to express the artificial polynucleotide and the plant regenerated therefrom.

2. Description of the Related Art

Heterologous genes may be isolated from a source other than the plant into which it will is be transformed or they may be modified or designed to have different or improved qualities. Particularly desirable traits or qualities of interest for plant genetic engineering would include but are not limited to resistance to insects, fungal diseases, and other pests and disease-causing agents, tolerances to herbicides, enhanced stability or shelf-life, yield, environmental stress tolerances, and nutritional enhancements.

Traditional molecular biological methods for generating novel genes and proteins generally involved random or directed mutagenesis. An example of random mutagenesis is a recombination technique known as “DNA shuffling” as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,605,793; 5,811,238; 5,830,721; 5,837,458 and International Applications WO 98/31837, WO 99/65927, the entirety of all of which is incorporated herein by reference. An alternative method of molecular evolution involves a staggered extension process (StEP) for in vitro mutagenesis and recombination of nucleic acid molecule sequences, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,965,408, incorporated herein by reference. An example of directed mutagenesis is the introduction of a point mutation at a specific site in a polypeptide.

An alternative approach, useful when the heterologous gene is from a non-plant source, is to design an artificial insecticidal gene that uses the most often used codon in maize plant codon usage table (Koziel et al., 1993, Biotechnology 11, 194-200). Fischhoff and Perlak (U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,365, incorporated herein by reference) report higher expression of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticidal protein compared in crop plants when the polynucleotide sequence was modified to reduce the occurrence of destabilizing sequences. It was necessary to modify the wild type Bt polynucleotide sequence because the wild type full length Bt polynucleotide did not express sufficient levels of insecticidal protein in plants to be agronomically useful.

Heterologous genes are cloned into vectors suitable for plant transformation. Transformation and regeneration techniques useful to incorporate heterologous genes into a plant's genome are well known in the art. The gene can then be expressed in the plant cell to exhibit the added characteristic or trait. However, heterologous genes that normally express well as transgenes may experience gene silencing when more than one copy of the same genes are expressed in the same plant. This may occur when a first heterologous gene is too similar to an endogenous gene DNA sequence in the plant. Other examples include when a transgenic plant is subsequently crossed to other transgenic plants having the same or similar transgenes or when the transgenic plant is retransformed with a plant expression cassette that contains the same or is similar gene. Similarly, gene silencing may occur if trait stacking employs the same genetic elements used to direct expression of the transgene gene of interest. In order to stack traits, stable transgenic lines should be done with different combinations of genes and genetic elements to avoid gene silencing.

N-phosphonomethylglycine, also known as glyphosate, is a well-known herbicide that has activity on a broad spectrum of plant species. Glyphosate is the active ingredient of Roundup® (Monsanto Co.), a safe herbicide having a desirably short half-life in the environment. When applied to a plant surface, glyphosate moves systemically through the plant. Glyphosate is phytotoxic due to its inhibition of the shikimic acid pathway, which provides a precursor for the synthesis of aromatic amino acids. Glyphosate inhibits the enzyme 5-enolpyruvyl-3-phosphoshikimate synthase (EPSPS).

Glyphosate tolerance can also be achieved by the expression of EPSPS variants that have lower affinity for glyphosate and therefore retain their catalytic activity in the presence of glyphosate (U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,435, herein incorporated by reference). Enzymes that degrade glyphosate in plant tissues (U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,175) are also capable of conferring cellular tolerance to glyphosate. Such genes are used for the production of transgenic crops that are tolerant to glyphosate, thereby allowing glyphosate to be used for effective weed control with minimal concern of crop damage. For example, glyphosate tolerance has been genetically engineered into corn (U.S. Pat. No. 5,554,798), wheat (U.S. Patent Application No. 20020062503), soybean (U.S. Patent Application No. 20020157139) and canola (WO 9204449), all of which are incorporated by reference. The transgenes for glyphosate tolerance and the transgenes for tolerance to other herbicides, e.g. bar gene, (Toki et al. Plant Physiol., 100:1503-1507, 1992; Thompson et al. EMBO J. 6:2519-2523, 1987, phosphinothricin acetyltransferase, BAR gene isolated from Streptomyces; DeBlock et al. EMBO J., 6:2513-2522, 1987, glufosinate herbicide) are also useful as selectable markers or scorable markers and can provide a useful phenotype for selection of plants linked with other agronomically useful traits.

What is needed in the art are methods to design genes for expression in plants to improve agronomically useful traits that avoid gene silencing when multiple copies are inserted and recombination with endogenous plant genes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1. Pileup comparison of the polynucleotide sequences changes of two artificial rice EPSPS versions (OsEPSPS_AT (SEQ ID NO:3), OsEPSPS_ZM (SEQ ID NO:4)) and a native rice EPSPS (OsEPSPS_Nat (SEQ ID NO:2)) the polypeptide of each modified to be glyphosate resistant.

FIG. 2. Pileup comparison of the polynucleotide sequences of a native (ZmEPSPS_Nat (SEQ ID NO:9)) and an artificial corn EPSPS (ZmEPSPS_ZM (SEQ ID NO:10)) the polypeptide of each modified to be glyphosate resistant.

FIG. 3. Pileup comparison of the polynucleotide sequences of a soybean native EPSPS (GmEPSPS_Nat (SEQ ID NO:6)) and artificial version (GmEPSPS_GM (SEQ ID NO:7)) the polypeptide of each modified to be glyphosate resistant.

FIG. 4. Pileup comparison of the polynucleotide sequences of a native BAR gene (BAR1_Nat (SEQ ID NO:20)) and two artificial versions with Zea mays (BAR1_ZM (SEQ ID NO:22)) and Arabidopsis thaliana (BAR1_AT (SEQ ID NO:21)) codon bias.

FIG. 5. Pileup comparison of the polynucleotide sequences of CTP2 and CP4EPSPS native (CTP2CP4_Nat (SEQ ID NO:36) and artificial versions (CTP2CP4_AT (SEQ ID 0:37), CTP2CP4_ZM (SEQ ID NO:38), and CTP2CP4_GM (SEQ ID NO:35)).

FIG. 6. Plasmid map of pMON54949.

FIG. 7. Plasmid map of pMON54950.

FIG. 8. Plasmid map of pMON30151.

FIG. 9. Plasmid map of pMON59302.

FIG. 10. Plasmid map of pMON59307.

FIG. 11. Plasmid map of pMON42411.

FIG. 12. Plasmid map of pMON58400.

FIG. 13. Plasmid map of pMON58401.

FIG. 14. Plasmid map of pMON54964.

FIG. 15. Plasmid map of pMON25455.

FIG. 16. Plasmid map of pMON30152.

FIG. 17. Plasmid map of pMON54992.

FIG. 18. Plasmid map of pMON54985.

FIG. 19. Plasmid map of pMON20999.

FIG. 20. Plasmid map of pMON45313.

FIG. 21. Plasmid map of pMON59308.

FIG. 22. Plasmid map of pMON59309.

FIG. 23. Plasmid map of pMON59313.

FIG. 24. Plasmid map of pMON59396.

FIG. 25. Plasmid map of pMON25496.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF SEQUENCE LISTING SEQ ID NO: 1 OsEPSPS_TIPS A rice EPSPS protein sequence modified to be glyphosate resistant, with chloroplast transit peptide. SEQ ID NO: 2 OsEPSPS_Nat Polynucleotide sequence of a rice native EPSPS polynucleotide modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 3 OsEPSPS_AT Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial rice EPSPS polynucleotide using the Arabidopsis codon usage table and the methods of the present invention, and further modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 4 OsEPSPS_ZM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial rice EPSPS polynucleotide using the Zea mays codon usage table and the methods of the present invention, and further modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 5 GmEPSPS_IKS A soybean EPSPS protein sequence modified to be glyphosate resistant, with chloroplast transit peptide. SEQ ID NO: 6 GmEPSPS_Nat Polynucleotide sequence of a soybean native EPSPS polynucleotide modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 7 GmEPSPS_GM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial soybean EPSPS polynucleotide using the Glycine max codon usage table and the methods of the present invention, and further modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 8 ZmEPSPS_TIPS A corn EPSPS protein sequence modified to be glyphosate resistant, with chloroplast transit peptide. SEQ ID NO: 9 ZmEPSPS_Nat Polynucleotide sequence of a corn native EPSPS polynucleotide modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 10 ZmEPSPS_ZM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial corn EPSPS polynucleotide using the Zea mays codon usage table and the methods of the present invention, and further modified to encode a glyphosate resistant protein. SEQ ID NO: 11 CTP2 Protein sequence of the chloroplast transit peptide 2 from Arabidopsis EPSPS gene. SEQ ID NO: 12 CTP2_Nat Polynucleotide sequence of the chloroplast transit peptide from Arabidopsis EPSPS. SEQ ID NO: 13 CTP2_AT Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the CTP2 using the Arabidopsis codon usage table and the methods of the present invention. SEQ ID NO: 14 CTP2_ZM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the CTP2 using the Zea mays codon usage table and the methods of the present invention. SEQ ID NO: 15 CP4EPSPS The protein sequence of the glyphosate resistant EPSPS protein from Agrobacterium strain CP4. SEQ ID NO: 16 CP4EPSPS_Nat Polynucleotide sequence of the native polynucleotide encoding the CP4EPSPS protein (U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,435). SEQ ID NO: 17 CP4EPSPS_AT Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the CP4EPSPS protein using the Arabidopsis codon usage table and the methods of the present invention. SEQ ID NO: 18 CP4EPSPS_ZM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the CP4EPSPS protein using the Zea mays codon usage table and the methods of the present invention. SEQ ID NO: 19 BAR1 The protein sequence of a phosphinothricin acetyltransferase. SEQ ID NO: 20 BAR1_Nat Polynucleotide sequence of the native polynucleotide isolated from Streptomyces encoding the phosphinothricin acetyltransferase. SEQ ID NO: 21 BAR1_AT Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the phosphinothricin acetyltransferase using the Arabidopsis codon usage table and the methods of the present invention. SEQ ID NO: 22 BAR1_ZM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the phosphinothricin acetyltransferase using the Zea mays codon usage table and the methods of the present invention. SEQ ID NO: 23 CP4EPSPS_Syn Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide with dicot codon bias. SEQ ID NO: 24 CP4EPSPS_AT_p1 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_AT polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 25 CP4EPSPS_AT_p2 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_AT polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 26 CP4EPSPS_ZM_p1 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_ZM polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 27 CP4EPSPS_ZM_p2 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_ZM polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 28 CP4EPSPS_Nat_p1 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_Nat polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 29 CP4EPSPS_Nat_p2 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_Nat polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 30 CP4EPSPS_Syn_p1 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_Syn polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 31 CP4EPSPS_Syn_p2 DNA primer molecule diagnostic for the CP4EPSPS_Syn polynucleotide. SEQ ID NO: 32 ZmAdh1 primer1 Control primer 1 diagnostic for endogenous corn Adh1 gene. SEQ ID NO: 33 ZmAdh1 primer2 Control primer 2 diagnostic for endogenous corn Adh1 gene. SEQ ID NO: 34 GNAGIAMKS Motif providing glyphosate resistance to a plant EPSPS. SEQ ID NO: 35 CTPEPSPSCP4_GM Polynucleotide sequence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding the CP4EPSPS protein using the Glycine max codon usage table.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides methods and compositions to design an artificial polynucleotide sequence that encodes a protein of interest, wherein the artificial polynucleotide is substantially divergent from a polynucleotide naturally occurring in a plant or a polynucleotide that has been introduced as a transgene into a plant and the artificial polynucleotide and polynucleotide encode a substantially identical polypeptide.

The artificial polynucleotides of the present invention that encodes proteins that provide agronomically useful phenotypes to a transgenic plant containing a DNA construct comprising the artificial polynucleotide. The agronomically useful phenotypes include, but are not limited to: drought tolerance, increased yield, cold tolerance, disease resistance, insect resistance and herbicide tolerance.

Another aspect of the present invention are artificial polynucleotides that encode a herbicide resistant EPSPS protein, a phosphinothricin acetyltransferase protein, a chloroplast transit peptide protein. In preferred embodiments of the present invention, the artificial polynucleotide molecule is selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21, SEQ ID NO:22, and SEQ ID NO:35.

The present invention provides DNA constructs comprising: a promoter molecule that functions in plants, operably linked to an artificial polynucleotide molecule of the present invention, wherein the artificial polynucleotide molecule is selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21, SEQ ID NO:22, and SEQ ID NO:35, operably linked to a transcription termination region.

The present invention further provides DNA constructs comprising: a promoter molecule that functions in plants, operably linked to an artificial polynucleotide molecule that encodes a chloroplast transit peptide, operably linked to a heterologous glyphosate resistant EPSPS, operably linked to a transcription termination signal region, wherein the artificial polynucleotide is substantially divergent in polynucleotide sequence from known polynucleotides encoding an identical chloroplast transit peptide.

The present invention provides DNA constructs comprising at least two expression cassettes, the first expression cassette comprising a promoter molecule that functions in plants, operably linked to an artificial polynucleotide molecule of the present invention, operably linked to a transcription termination signal region, and the second expression cassette comprising a promoter molecule that functions in plants, operably linked to a polynucleotide molecule that encodes a substantially identical polypeptide as said artificial polynucleotide and is less than eight-five percent similar in polynucleotide sequence to said artificial polynucleotide, operably linked to a transcription termination signal region.

The present invention provides plant cells, plants or progeny thereof comprising a DNA construct of the present invention. Of particular interest are plants of progeny thereof selected from the group consisting of wheat, corn, rice, soybean, cotton, potato, canola, turf grass, forest trees, grain sorghum, vegetable crops, ornamental plants, forage crops, and fruit crops.

A method of the present invention reduces gene silencing during breeding of transgenic plants comprising the steps of:

a) constructing an artificial polynucleotide that is substantially divergent from known polynucleotides that encode a substantially identical protein, and

b) constructing a DNA construct containing said artificial polynucleotide molecule; and

c) transforming said DNA construct into a plant cell; and

d) regenerating said plant cell into a transgenic plant; and

e) crossing said transgenic plant with a fertile plant, wherein said fertile plant contains a polynucleotide molecule that encodes a protein substantially identical to a protein encoded by said artificial polynucleotide molecule and wherein said artificial polynucleotide molecule and said polynucleotide molecule are substantially divergent.

Another aspect of the invention is a transgenic plant cell comprising two polynucleotides, wherein at least one of the polynucleotides is a transgene and the two polynucleotides encode a substantially identical protein and are less than eight-five percent similar in polynucleotide sequence.

Another aspect of the present invention in a method to reduce gene silencing during production of transgenic plants comprises the steps of:

a) constructing an artificial polynucleotide that is substantially divergent from known polynucleotides that encode a substantially identical protein, and

b) constructing a first DNA construct containing said artificial polynucleotide molecule; and

c) transforming said DNA construct into a plant cell; and

d) regenerating said plant cell into a transgenic plant; and

e) retransforming a cell from said transgenic plant with a second DNA construct comprising a polynucleotide molecule that encodes a substantially identical protein to said artificial polynucleotide and said polynucleotide and artificial polynucleotide are substantially divergent in polynucleotide sequence; and

f) regenerating said cell of step d into a transgenic plant comprising both said artificial polynucleotide and said polynucleotide.

Further provided by the present invention are methods for selection of a plants transformed with a DNA construct of the invention comprising the steps of:

a) transforming a plant cell with a DNA construct of the present invention; and

b) culturing said plant cell in a selective medium containing a herbicide selected from the group consisting of: glyphosate and glufosinate, to selectively kill cells which have not been transformed with said DNA constructs; and

c) regenerating said plant cell into a fertile plant.

Another aspect of the invention is a method of detecting an artificial polynucleotide in a transgenic plant cell, plant or progeny thereof comprising the steps:

a) contacting a DNA sample isolated from said plant cell, plant or progeny thereof with a DNA molecule, wherein said DNA molecule comprises at least one DNA molecule of a pair of DNA molecules that when used in a nucleic-acid amplification reaction produces an amplicon that is diagnostic for said artificial polynucleotide molecule selected from the group consisting of: SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21, SEQ ID NO:22, and SEQ ED NO:35.

(a) performing a nucleic acid amplification reaction, thereby producing the amplicon; and

(b) detecting the amplicon.

Reagents provided for performing the detection method above include, but are not limited to: DNA molecules that specifically hybridize to an artificial polynucleotide molecule selected from the group consisting of: SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21, and SEQ ID NO:22; and isolated DNA molecules selected from the group consisting of: SEQ ID NO:24, SEQ ID NO:25, SEQ ID NO:26, and SEQ ID NO:27.

The present invention provides plants, and progeny comprising a DNA molecule selected from the group consisting of: SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21 SEQ ID NO:22, SEQ ID NO:24, SEQ ID NO:25, SEQ ID NO:26, and SEQ ID NO:27.

The present invention provides pairs of DNA molecules selected from the group comprising: a first DNA molecule and a second DNA molecule, wherein the first DNA molecule is SEQ ID NO:24 or its complement and the second DNA molecule is SEQ ID NO:25 or its complement and the pair of DNA molecules when used in a DNA amplification method produce an amplicon, and a first DNA molecule and a second DNA molecule, wherein the first DNA molecule is SEQ ID NO:26 or its complement and the second DNA molecule is SEQ ID NO:27 or its complement and the pair of DNA molecules when used in a DNA amplification method produce an amplicon, wherein the amplicon is diagnostic for the presence of an artificial polynucleotide of the present invention in the genome of a transgenic plant.

The present invention provides for a plant and progeny thereof identified by a DNA amplification method to contain in its genome a DNA molecule selected from the group consisting of: SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21 SEQ ID NO:22, SEQ ID NO:24, SEQ ID NO:25, SEQ ID NO:26, and SEQ ID NO:27.

The present invention provides and contemplates DNA detection kits comprising: at least one DNA molecule of sufficient length to be specifically homologous or complementary to an artificial polynucleotide selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21, and SEQ ID NO:22, wherein said DNA molecule is useful as a DNA probe or DNA primer; or at least one DNA molecule homologous or complementary to a DNA primer molecule selected from the group consisting of: SEQ ID NO:24, SEQ ID NO:25, SEQ ID NO:26, and SEQ ID NO:27.

The present invention further provides a method of detecting the presence of an artificial polynucleotide encoding a glyphosate resistant EPSPS in a DNA sample, the method comprising:

-   -   (a) extracting a DNA sample from a plant; and     -   (b) contacting the DNA sample with a labeled DNA molecule of         sufficient length to be specifically homologous or complementary         to an artificial polynucleotide selected from the group         consisting of: SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID         NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17,         and SEQ ID NO:18, wherein said labeled DNA molecule is a DNA         probe; and     -   (c) subjecting the sample and DNA probe to stringent         hybridization conditions; and     -   (d) detecting the DNA probe hybridized to the DNA sample.

The present invention provides for an isolated polynucleotide that encodes an EPSPS enzyme, the EPSPS enzyme contains the motif of SEQ ID NO:34. The present invention provides for a DNA construct containing a polynucleotide that encodes for the EPSPS enzyme with the motif of SEQ ID NO:34. A plant cell, plant or progeny thereof that is tolerant to glyphosate as a result of expressing an EPSPS enzyme that contains the motif of SEQ ID NO:34 is an aspect of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The following definitions are provided to better define the present invention and to guide those of ordinary skill in the art in the practice of the present invention. Unless otherwise noted, terms are to be understood according to conventional usage by those of ordinary skill in the relevant art. Definitions of common terms in molecular biology may also be found in Rieger et al., Glossary of Genetics: Classical and Molecular, 5th edition, Springer-Verlag: New York, (1991); and Lewin, Genes V, Oxford University Press: New York, (1994). The nomenclature for DNA bases as set forth at 37 CFR §1.822 is used. The standard one- and three-letter nomenclature for amino acid residues is used.

“Amino-acid substitutions”, “Amino-acid variants”, are preferably substitutions of single amino-acid residue for another amino-acid residue at any position within the protein. Substitutions, deletions, insertions or any combination thereof can be combined to arrive at a final construct.

An “artificial polynucleotide” as used in the present invention is a DNA sequence designed according to the methods of the present invention and created as an isolated DNA molecule for use in a DNA construct that provides expression of a protein in host cells, and for the purposes of cloning into appropriate constructs or other uses known to those skilled in the art. Computer programs are available for these purposes, including but not limited to the “BestFit” or “Gap” programs of the Sequence Analysis Software Package, Genetics Computer Group (GCG), Inc., University of Wisconsin Biotechnology Center, Madison, Wis. 53711. The artificial polynucleotide may be created by a one or more methods known in the art, that include, but are not limited to: overlapping PCR. An artificial polynucleotide of the present invention is substantially divergent from other polynucleotides that code for the identical or nearly identical protein.

The term “chimeric” refers to a fusion nucleic acid or protein sequence. A chimeric nucleic acid coding sequence is comprised of two or more sequences joined in-frame that encode a chimeric protein. A chimeric gene refers to the multiple genetic elements derived from heterologous sources comprising a gene.

The phrases “coding sequence”, “open reading frame”, and “structural sequence” refer to the region of continuous sequential nucleic acid triplets encoding a protein, polypeptide, or peptide sequence.

“Codon” refers to a sequence of three nucleotides that specify a particular amino acid.

“Codon usage” or “codon bias” refers to the frequency of use of codons encoding amino acids in the coding sequences of organisms.

“Complementarity” and “complement” when referring to nucleic acid sequences, refers to the specific binding of adenine to thymine (uracil in RNA) and cytosine to guanine on opposite strands of DNA or RNA.

“Construct” refers to the heterologous genetic elements operably linked to each other making up a recombinant DNA molecule and may comprise elements that provide expression of a DNA polynucleotide molecule in a host cell and elements that provide maintenance of the construct.

“C-terminal region” refers to the region of a peptide, polypeptide, or protein chain from the middle thereof to the end that carries the amino acid having a free carboxyl group.

The term “divergent”, as used herein, refers to the comparison of polynucleotide molecules that encode the same or nearly the same protein or polypeptide. The four letter genetic code (A, G, C, and T/U) comprises three letter codons that direct t-RNA molecules to assemble amino acids into a polypeptide from an mRNA template. Having more than one codon that may code for the same amino acid is referred to as degenerate. Degenerate codons are used to construct substantially divergent polynucleotide molecules that encode the same polypeptide where these molecules have a sequence of nucleotides of their entire length in which they are less than 85% identical, and there are no lengths of polynucleotide sequence greater than 23 nucleotides that are identical.

The term “encoding DNA” refers to chromosomal DNA, plasmid DNA, cDNA, or artificial DNA polynucleotide that encodes any of the proteins discussed herein.

The term “endogenous” refers to materials originating from within an organism or cell.

“Endonuclease” refers to an enzyme that hydrolyzes double stranded DNA at internal locations.

“Exogenous” refers to materials originating from outside of an organism or cell. This typically applies to nucleic acid molecules used in producing transformed or transgenic host cells and plants.

“Exon” refers to the portion of a gene that is actually translated into protein, i.e., a coding sequence.

The term “expression” refers to the transcription or translation of a polynucleotide to produce a corresponding gene product, a RNA or protein.

“Fragments”. A fragment of a gene is a portion of a full-length polynucleic acid molecule that is of at least a minimum length capable of transcription into a RNA, translation into a peptide, or useful as a probe or primer in a DNA detection method.

The term “gene” refers to chromosomal DNA, plasmid DNA, cDNA, artificial DNA polynucleotide, or other DNA that encodes a peptide, polypeptide, protein, or RNA molecule, and the genetic elements flanking the coding sequence that are involved in the regulation of expression.

The term “genome” as it applies to viruses encompasses all of the nucleic acid sequence contained within the capsid of the virus. The term “genome” as it applies to bacteria encompasses both the chromosome and plasmids within a bacterial host cell. Encoding nucleic acids of the present invention introduced into bacterial host cells can therefore be either chromosomally-integrated or plasmid-localized. The term “genome” as it applies to plant cells encompasses not only chromosomal DNA found within the nucleus, but organelle DNA found within subcellular components of the cell. Nucleic acids of the present invention introduced into plant cells can therefore be either chromosomally-integrated or organelle-localized.

“Glyphosate” refers to N-phosphonomethylglycine and its' salts, Glyphosate is the active ingredient of Roundup® herbicide (Monsanto Co.). Plant treatments with “glyphosate” refer to treatments with the Roundup® or Roundup Ultra® herbicide formulation, unless otherwise stated. Glyphosate as N-phosphonomethylglycine and its' salts (not formulated Roundup® herbicide) are components of synthetic culture media used for the selection of bacteria and plant tolerance to glyphosate or used to determine enzyme resistance in in vitro biochemical assays.

“Heterologous DNA” sequence refers to a polynucleotide sequence that originates from a foreign source or species or, if from the same source, is modified from its original form.

“Homologous DNA” refers to DNA from the same source as that of the recipient cell.

“Hybridization” refers to the ability of a strand of nucleic acid to join with a complementary strand via base pairing. Hybridization occurs when complementary sequences in the two nucleic acid strands bind to one another. The nucleic acid probes and primers of the present invention hybridize under stringent conditions to a target DNA sequence. Any conventional nucleic acid hybridization or amplification method can be used to identify the presence of DNA from a transgenic event in a sample. Nucleic acid molecules or fragments thereof are capable of specifically hybridizing to other nucleic acid molecules under certain circumstances. As used herein, two nucleic acid molecules are said to be capable of specifically hybridizing to one another if the two molecules are capable of forming an anti-parallel, double-stranded nucleic acid structure. A nucleic acid molecule is said to be the “complement” of another nucleic acid molecule if they exhibit complete complementarity. As used herein, molecules are said to exhibit “complete complementarity” when every nucleotide of one of the molecules is complementary to a nucleotide of the other. Two molecules are said to be “minimally complementary” if they can hybridize to one another with sufficient stability to permit them to remain annealed to one another under at least conventional “low-stringency” conditions. Similarly, the molecules are said to be “complementary” if they can hybridize to one another with sufficient stability to permit them to remain annealed to one another under conventional “high-stringency” conditions. Conventional stringency conditions are described by Sambrook et al., 1989, and by Haymes et al., In: Nucleic Acid Hybridization, A Practical Approach, IRL Press, Washington, D.C. (1985), herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. Departures from complete complementarity are therefore permissible, as long as such departures do not completely preclude the capacity of the molecules to form a double-stranded structure. In order for a nucleic acid molecule to serve as a primer or probe it need only be sufficiently complementary in sequence to be able to form a stable double-stranded structure under the particular solvent and salt concentrations employed.

As used herein, a substantially homologous sequence is a nucleic acid sequence that will specifically hybridize to the complement of the nucleic acid sequence to which it is being compared under high stringency conditions. The term “stringent conditions” is functionally defined with regard to the hybridization of a nucleic-acid probe to a target nucleic acid (i.e., to a particular nucleic-acid sequence of interest) by the specific hybridization procedure discussed in Sambrook et al., 1989, at 9.52-9.55. See also, Sambrook et al., 1989 at 9.47-9.52, 9.56-9.58 herein incorporated by reference in its entirety; Kanehisa, (Nucl. Acids Res. 12:203-213, 1984, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); and Wetmur and Davidson, (J. Mol. Biol. 31:349-370, 1988, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Accordingly, the nucleotide sequences of the invention may be used for their ability to selectively form duplex molecules with complementary stretches of DNA fragments. Depending on the application envisioned, one will desire to employ varying conditions of hybridization to achieve varying degrees of selectivity of probe towards target sequence. For applications requiring high selectivity, one will typically desire to employ relatively stringent conditions to form the hybrids, e.g., one will select relatively low salt and/or high temperature conditions, such as provided by about 0.02 M to about 0.15 M NaCl at temperatures of about 50° C. to about 70° C. A stringent conditions, for example, is to wash the hybridization filter at least twice with high-stringency wash buffer (0.2×SSC, 0.1% SDS, 65° C.). Appropriate stringency conditions which promote DNA hybridization, for example, 6.0× sodium chloride/sodium citrate (SSC) at about 45° C., followed by a wash of 2.0×SSC at 50° C., are known to those skilled in the art or can be found in Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, John Wiley & Sons, N.Y. (1989), 6.3.1-6.3.6. For example, the salt concentration in the wash step can be selected from a low stringency of about 2.0×SSC at 50° C. to a high stringency of about 0.2×SSC at 50° C. In addition, the temperature in the wash step can be increased from low stringency conditions at room temperature, about 22° C., to high stringency conditions at about 65° C. Both temperature and salt may be varied, or either the temperature or the salt concentration may be held constant while the other variable is changed. Such selective conditions tolerate little, if any, mismatch between the probe and the template or target strand. Detection of DNA sequences via hybridization is well-known to those of skill in the art, and the teachings of U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,965,188 and 5,176,995 are exemplary of the methods of hybridization analyses.

“Identity” refers to the degree of similarity between two polynucleic acid or protein sequences. An alignment of the two sequences is performed by a suitable computer program. A widely used and accepted computer program for performing sequence alignments is CLUSTALW v1.6 (Thompson, et al. Nucl. Acids Res., 22: 4673-4680, 1994). The number of matching bases or amino acids is divided by the total number of bases or amino acids, and multiplied by 100 to obtain a percent identity. For example, if two 580 base pair sequences had 145 matched bases, they would be 25 percent identical. If the two compared sequences are of different lengths, the number of matches is divided by the shorter of the two lengths. For example, if there are 100 matched amino acids between a 200 and a 400 amino acid protein, they are 50 percent identical with respect to the shorter sequence. If the shorter sequence is less than 150 bases or 50 amino acids in length, the number of matches are divided by 150 (for nucleic acid bases) or 50 (for amino acids), and multiplied by 100 to obtain a percent identity.

As described herein a protein can be “substantially identical” to related proteins. These proteins with substantial identity generally comprise at least one polypeptide sequence that has at least ninety-eight sequence percent identity compared to its related other polypeptide sequence. The Gap program in the WISCONSIN PACKAGE version 10.0-UNIX from Genetics Computer Group, Inc. is based on the method of Needleman and Wunsch (J. Mol. Biol. 48:443-453, 1970) using the set of default parameters for pairwise comparison (for amino acid sequence comparison: Gap Creation Penalty=8, Gap Extension Penalty=20); or using the TBLASTN program in the BLAST 2.2.1 software suite (Altschul et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 25:3389-3402), using BLOSUM62 matrix (Henikoff and Henikoff, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89:10915-10919, 1992) and the set of default parameters for pair-wise comparison (gap creation cost=11, gap extension cost=1). In BLAST, the E-value, or expectation value, represents the number of different alignments with scores equivalent to or better than the raw alignment score, S, that are expected to occur in a database search by chance. The lower the E value, the more significant the match. Because database size is an element in E-value calculations, E-values obtained by “BLASTing” against public databases, such as GenBank, have generally increased over time for any given query/entry match. Percent identity refers to the percentage of identically matched amino acid residues that exist along the length of that portion of the sequences which is aligned by the BLAST algorithm.

“Intron” refers to a portion of a gene not translated into protein, even though it is transcribed into RNA.

An “isolated” nucleic acid sequence is substantially separated or purified away from other nucleic acid sequences with which the nucleic acid is normally associated in the cell of the organism in which the nucleic acid naturally occurs, i.e., other chromosomal or extrachromosomal DNA. The term embraces nucleic acids that are biochemically purified so as to substantially remove contaminating nucleic acids and other cellular components. The term also embraces recombinant nucleic acids and chemically synthesized nucleic acids.

“Isolated,” “Purified,” “Homogeneous” polypeptides. A polypeptide is “isolated” if it has been separated from the cellular components (nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and other polypeptides) that naturally accompany it or that is chemically synthesized or recombinant. A monomeric polypeptide is isolated when at least 60% by weight of a sample is composed of the polypeptide, preferably 90% or more, more preferably 95% or more, and most preferably more than 99%. Protein purity or homogeneity is indicated, for example, by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of a protein sample, followed by visualization of a single polypeptide band upon staining the polyacrylamide gel; high pressure liquid chromatography; or other conventional methods. Proteins can be purified by any of the means known in the art, for example as described in Guide to Protein Purification, ed. Deutscher, Meth. Enzymol. 185, Academic Press, San Diego, 1990; and Scopes, Protein Purification: Principles and Practice, Springer Verlag, New York, 1982.

“Labeling” or “labeled”. There are a variety of conventional methods and reagents for labeling polynucleotides and polypeptides and fragments thereof. Typical labels include radioactive isotopes, ligands or ligand receptors, fluorophores, chemiluminescent agents, and enzymes. Methods for labeling and guidance in the choice of labels appropriate for various purposes are discussed, e.g., in Sambrook et al., Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Spring Harbor Press (1989) and Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, ed. Ausubel et al., Greene Publishing and Wiley-Interscience, New York, (1992).

“Mature protein coding region”, this term refers to the sequence of a processed protein product, i.e., a mature EPSP synthase remaining after the chloroplast transit peptide has been removed.

“Native”, the term “native” generally refers to a naturally-occurring (“wild-type”) polynucleic acid or polypeptide. However, in the context of the present invention, some modification of an isolated polynucleotide and polypeptide may have occurred to provide a polypeptide with a particular phenotype, e.g., amino acid substitution in glyphosate sensitive EPSPS to provide a glyphosate resistant EPSPS. For comparative purposes in the present invention, the isolated polynucleotide that contains a few substituted nucleotides to provide amino acid modification for herbicide tolerance is referred to as the “native” polynucleotide when compared to the substantially divergent polynucleotide created by the methods of the present invention. However, the “native” polynucleotide modified in this manner is normative with respect to the genetic elements normally found linked to a naturally occurring unmodified polynucleotide.

“N-terminal region” refers to a region of a peptide, polypeptide, or protein chain from the amino acid having a free amino group to the middle of the chain.

“Nucleic acid” refers to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA).

-   -   Nucleic acid codes: A=adenosine; C=cytosine; G=guanosine;         T=thymidine. Codes used for synthesis of oligonucleotides:         N=equimolar A, C, G, and T; I=deoxyinosine; K=equimolar G and T;         R=equimolar A and G; S=equimolar C and G; W=equimolar A and T;         Y=equimolar C and T.

A “nucleic acid segment” or a “nucleic acid molecule segment” is a nucleic acid molecule that has been isolated free of total genomic DNA of a particular species, or that has been synthesized. Included with the term “nucleic acid segment” are DNA segments, recombinant vectors, plasmids, cosmids, phagemids, phage, viruses, et cetera.

“Nucleotide Sequence Variants”, using well-known methods, the skilled artisan can readily produce nucleotide and amino acid sequence variants of genes and proteins, respectively. For example, “variant” DNA molecules of the present invention are DNA molecules containing changes in an EPSPS gene sequence, i.e., changes that include one or more nucleotides of the EPSPS gene sequence is deleted, added, and/or substituted, such that the variant EPSPS gene encodes a protein that retains EPSPS activity. Variant DNA molecules can be produced, for example, by standard DNA mutagenesis techniques or by chemically synthesizing the variant DNA molecule or a portion thereof. Methods for chemical synthesis of nucleic acids are discussed, for example, in Beaucage et al., Tetra. Letts. 22:1859-1862 (1981), and Matteucci et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 103:3185-(1981). Chemical synthesis of nucleic acids can be performed, for example, on automated oligonucleotide synthesizers. Such variants preferably do not change the reading frame of the protein-coding region of the nucleic acid and preferably encode a protein having no change, or only a minor reduction.

“Open reading frame (ORF)” refers to a region of DNA or RNA encoding a peptide, polypeptide, or protein.

“Operably Linked”. A first nucleic-acid sequence is “operably” linked with a second nucleic-acid sequence when the first nucleic-acid sequence is placed in a functional relationship with the second nucleic-acid sequence. For example, a promoter is operably linked to a protein-coding sequence if the promoter effects the transcription or expression of the coding sequence. Generally, operably linked DNA sequences are contiguous and, where necessary to join two protein-coding regions, in reading frame.

“Overexpression” refers to the expression of a RNA or polypeptide or protein encoded by a DNA introduced into a host cell, wherein the RNA or polypeptide or protein is either not normally present in the host cell, or wherein the RNA or polypeptide or protein is present in said host cell at a higher level than that normally expressed from the endogenous gene encoding the RNA or polypeptide or protein.

The term “plant” encompasses any higher plant and progeny thereof, including monocots (e.g., corn, rice, wheat, barley, etc.), dicots (e.g., soybean, cotton, canola, tomato, potato, Arabidopsis, tobacco, etc.), gymnosperms (pines, firs, cedars, etc.) and includes parts of plants, including reproductive units of a plant (e.g., seeds, bulbs, tubers, fruit, flowers, etc.) or other parts or tissues from that the plant can be reproduced.

“Plant expression cassette” refers to chimeric DNA segments comprising the regulatory elements that are operably linked to provide the expression of a transgene product in plants

“Plasmid” refers to a circular, extrachromosomal, self-replicating piece of DNA.

“Polyadenylation signal” or “polyA signal” refers to a nucleic acid sequence located 3′ to a coding region that causes the addition of adenylate nucleotides to the 3′ end of the mRNA transcribed from the coding region.

“Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)” refers to a DNA amplification method that uses an enzymatic technique to create multiple copies of one sequence of nucleic acid (amplicon). Copies of a DNA molecule are prepared by shuttling a DNA polymerase between two amplimers. The basis of this amplification method is multiple cycles of temperature changes to denature, then re-anneal amplimers (DNA primer molecules), followed by extension to synthesize new DNA strands in the region located between the flanking amplimers. Nucleic-acid amplification can be accomplished by any of the various nucleic-acid amplification methods known in the art, including the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A variety of amplification methods are known in the art and are described, inter alfa, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,683,195 and 4,683,202 and in PCR Protocols: A Guide to Methods and Applications, ed. Innis et al., Academic Press, San Diego, 1990. PCR amplification methods have been developed to amplify up to 22 kb of genomic DNA and up to 42 kb of bacteriophage DNA (Cheng et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91:5695-5699, 1994). These methods as well as other methods known in the art of DNA amplification may be used in the practice of the present invention.

Polynucleotide refers to a length of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules greater than two, which are connected to form a larger molecule.

Polypeptide fragments. The present invention also encompasses fragments of a protein that lacks at least one residue of a native full-length protein, but that substantially maintains activity of the protein.

The term “promoter” or “promoter region” refers to a polynucleic acid molecule that functions as a regulatory element, usually found upstream (5′) to a coding sequence, that controls expression of the coding sequence by controlling production of messenger RNA (mRNA) by providing the recognition site for RNA polymerase and/or other factors necessary for start of transcription at the correct site. As contemplated herein, a promoter or promoter region includes variations of promoters derived by means of ligation to various regulatory sequences, random or controlled mutagenesis, and addition or duplication of enhancer sequences. The promoter region disclosed herein, and biologically functional equivalents thereof, are responsible for driving the transcription of coding sequences under their control when introduced into a host as part of a suitable recombinant vector, as demonstrated by its ability to produce mRNA.

“Recombinant”. A “recombinant” nucleic acid is made by a combination of two otherwise separated segments of sequence, e.g., by chemical synthesis or by the manipulation of isolated segments of nucleic acids by genetic engineering techniques.

The term “recombinant DNA construct” or “recombinant vector” refers to any agent such as a plasmid, cosmid, virus, autonomously replicating sequence, phage, or linear or circular single-stranded or double-stranded DNA or RNA nucleotide sequence, derived from any source, capable of genomic integration or autonomous replication, comprising a DNA molecule that one or more DNA sequences have been linked in a functionally operative manner. Such recombinant DNA constructs or vectors are capable of introducing a 5′ regulatory sequence or promoter region and a DNA sequence for a selected gene product into a cell in such a manner that the DNA sequence is transcribed into a functional mRNA that is translated and therefore expressed. Recombinant DNA constructs or recombinant vectors may be constructed to be capable of expressing antisense RNAs, in order to inhibit translation of a specific RNA of interest.

“Regeneration” refers to the process of growing a plant from a plant cell (e.g., plant protoplast or explant).

“Reporter” refers to a gene and corresponding gene product that when expressed in transgenic organisms produces a product detectable by chemical or molecular methods or produces an observable phenotype.

“Resistance” refers to an enzyme that is able to function in the presence of a toxin, for example, glyphosate resistant class II EPSP synthases. An enzyme that has resistance to a toxin may have the function of detoxifying the toxin, e.g., the phosphinothricin acetyltransferase, glyphosate oxidoreductase, or may be a mutant enzyme having catalytic activity which is unaffected by an herbicide which disrupts the same activity in the wild type enzyme, e.g., acetolactate synthase, mutant class I EPSP synthases.

“Restriction enzyme” refers to an enzyme that recognizes a specific palindromic sequence of nucleotides in double stranded DNA and cleaves both strands; also called a restriction endonuclease. Cleavage typically occurs within the restriction site.

“Selectable marker” refers to a polynucleic acid molecule that encodes a protein, which confers a phenotype facilitating identification of cells containing the polynucleic acid molecule. Selectable markers include those genes that confer resistance to antibiotics (e.g., ampicillin, kanamycin), complement a nutritional deficiency (e.g., uracil, histidine, leucine), or impart a visually distinguishing characteristic (e.g., color changes or fluorescence). Useful dominant selectable marker genes include genes encoding antibiotic resistance genes (e.g., neomycin phosphotransferase, aad); and herbicide resistance genes (e.g., phosphinothricin acetyltransferase, class II EPSP synthase, modified class I EPSP synthase). A useful strategy for selection of transformants for herbicide resistance is described, e.g., in Vasil, Cell Culture and Somatic Cell Genetics of Plants, Vols. I-III, Laboratory Procedures and Their Applications Academic Press, New York (1984).

The term “specific for (a target sequence)” indicates that a DNA probe or DNA primer hybridizes under given hybridization conditions only to the target sequence in a sample comprising the target sequence.

The term “substantially purified”, as used herein, refers to a molecule separated from other molecules normally associated with it in its native state. More preferably, a substantially purified molecule is the predominant species present in a preparation. A substantially purified molecule may be greater than 60% free, preferably 75% free, more preferably 90% free from the other molecules (exclusive of solvent) present in the natural mixture. The term “substantially purified” is not intended to encompass molecules present in their native state.

“Tolerant” or “tolerance” refers to a reduced effect of a biotic or abiotic agent on the growth and development of organisms and plants, e.g. a pest or a herbicide.

“Transcription” refers to the process of producing an RNA copy from a DNA template.

“Transformation” refers to a process of introducing an exogenous polynucleic acid molecule (e.g., a DNA construct, a recombinant polynucleic acid molecule) into a cell or protoplast and that exogenous polynucleic acid molecule is incorporated into a chromosome or is capable of autonomous replication.

“Transformed” or “transgenic” refers to a cell, tissue, organ, or organism into which a foreign polynucleic acid, such as a DNA vector or recombinant polynucleic acid molecule. A “transgenic” or “transformed” cell or organism also includes progeny of the cell or organism and progeny produced from a breeding program employing such a “transgenic” plant as a parent in a cross and exhibiting an altered phenotype resulting from the presence of the foreign polynucleic acid molecule.

The term “transgene” refers to any polynucleic acid molecule normative to a cell or organism transformed into the cell or organism. “Transgene” also encompasses the component parts of a native plant gene modified by insertion of a normative polynucleic acid molecule by directed recombination or site specific mutation.

“Transit peptide” or “targeting peptide” molecules, these terms generally refer to peptide molecules that when linked to a protein of interest directs the protein to a particular tissue, cell, subcellular location, or cell organelle. Examples include, but are not limited to, chloroplast transit peptides, nuclear targeting signals, and vacuolar signals. The chloroplast transit peptide is of particular utility in the present invention to direct expression of the EPSPS enzyme to the chloroplast.

The term “translation” refers to the production the corresponding gene product, i.e., a peptide, polypeptide, or protein from a mRNA.

“Vector” refers to a plasmid, cosmid, bacteriophage, or virus that carries foreign DNA into a host organism.

Polynucleotides

Methods of the present invention include designing genes that confer a trait of interest to the plant into which they are introduced. The transgenes of agronomic interest that provide beneficial agronomic traits to crop plants, for example, including, but not limited to genetic elements comprising herbicide resistance (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,633,435; 5,463,175), increased yield (U.S. Pat. No. 5,716,837), insect control (U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,063,597; 6,063,756; 6,093,695; 5,942,664; 6,110,464), fungal disease resistance (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,516,671; 5,773,696; 6,121,436; 6,316,407, and 6,506,962), virus resistance (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,304,730 and 6,013,864), nematode resistance (U.S. Pat. No. 6,228,992), bacterial disease resistance (U.S. Pat. No. 5,516,671), starch production (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,750,876 and 6,476,295), modified oils production (U.S. Pat. No. 6,444,876), high oil production (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,608,149 and 6,476,295), modified fatty acid content (U.S. Pat. No. 6,537,750), high protein production (U.S. Pat. No. 6,380,466), fruit ripening (U.S. Pat. No. 5,512,466), enhanced animal and human nutrition (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,985,605 and 6,171,640), biopolymers (U.S. Pat. No. 5,958,745 and US Patent Publication No. US20030028917), environmental stress resistance (U.S. Pat. No. 6,072,103), pharmaceutical peptides (U.S. Pat. No. 6,080,560), improved processing traits (U.S. Pat. No. 6,476,295), improved digestibility (U.S. Pat. No. 6,531,648) low raffinose (U.S. Pat. No. 6,166,292), industrial enzyme production (U.S. Pat. No. 5,543,576), improved flavor (U.S. Pat. No. 6,011,199), nitrogen fixation (U.S. Pat. No. 5,229,114), hybrid seed production (U.S. Pat. No. 5,689,041), and biofuel production (U.S. Pat. No. 5,998,700), the genetic elements and transgenes described in the patents listed above are herein incorporated by reference.

Herbicides for which transgenic plant tolerance has been demonstrated and the method of the present invention can be applied, include but are not limited to: glyphosate, glufosinate, sulfonylureas, imidazolinones, bromoxynil, delapon, cyclohezanedione, protoporphyrionogen oxidase inhibitors, and isoxasflutole herbicides. Polynucleotide molecules encoding proteins involved in herbicide tolerance are known in the art, and include, but are not limited to a is polynucleotide molecule encoding 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS, described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,627,061, 5,633,435, 6,040,497; Padgette et al. Herbicide Resistant Crops, Lewis Publishers, 53-85, 1996; and Penaloza-Vazquez, et al. Plant Cell Reports 14:482-487, 1995; and aroA (U.S. Pat. No. 5,094,945) for glyphosate tolerance; bromoxynil nitrilase (Bxn) for Bromoxynil tolerance (U.S. Pat. No. 4,810,648); phytoene desaturase (crtI, Misawa et al, (1993) Plant J. 4:833-840, and (1994) Plant J 6:481-489); for tolerance to norflurazon, acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS, aka ALS, Sathasiivan et al. Nucl. Acids Res. 18:2188-2193, 1990); and the bar gene for tolerance to glufosinate and bialaphos (DeBlock, et al. EMBO J. 6:2513-2519, 1987).

Herbicide tolerance is a desirable phenotype for crop plants. N-phosphonomethylglycine, also known as glyphosate, is a well known herbicide that has activity on a broad spectrum of plant species. Glyphosate is the active ingredient of Roundup® (Monsanto Co.), a safe herbicide having a desirably short half life in the environment. When applied onto a plant surface, glyphosate moves systemically through the plant. Glyphosate is toxic to plants by inhibiting the shikimic acid pathway, which provides a precursor for the synthesis of aromatic amino acids. Specifically, glyphosate affects the conversion of phosphoenolpyruvate and 3-phosphoshikimic acid to 5-enolpyruvyl-3-phosphoshikimic acid by inhibiting the enzyme 5-enolpyruvyl-3-phosphoshikimate synthase (hereinafter referred to as EPSP synthase or EPSPS). For purposes of the present invention, the term glyphosate” should be considered to include any herbicidally effective form of N-phosphonomethylglycine (including any salt thereof) and other forms which result in the production of the glyphosate anion in planta.

Through plant genetic engineering methods, it is possible to produce glyphosate tolerant plants by inserting into the plant genome a DNA molecule that causes the production of higher levels of wild-type EPSPS (Shah et al., Science 233:478-481, 1986). Glyphosate tolerance can also be achieved by the expression of EPSPS variants that have lower affinity for glyphosate and therefore retain their catalytic activity in the presence of glyphosate (U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,435). Enzymes that degrade glyphosate in the plant tissues (U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,175) are also capable of conferring cellular tolerance to glyphosate. Such genes, therefore, allow for the production of transgenic crops that are tolerant to glyphosate, thereby allowing glyphosate to be used for effective weed control with minimal concern of crop damage. For example, glyphosate tolerance has been genetically engineered into corn (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,554,798, 6,040,497), wheat (Zhou et al. Plant Cell Rep. 15:159-163, 1995), soybean (WO 9200377) and canola (WO 9204449).

Variants of the wild-type EPSPS enzyme have been isolated that are glyphosate-resistant as a result of alterations in the EPSPS amino acid coding sequence (Kishore et al., Annu. Rev. Biochem. 57:627-663, 1988; Schulz et al., Arch. Microbiol. 137:121-123, 1984; Sost et al., FEBS Lett. 173:238-241, 1984; Kishore et al., In “Biotechnology for Crop Protection” ACS Symposium Series No. 379. eds. Hedlin et al., 37-48, 1988). These variants typically have a higher K_(i) for glyphosate than the wild-type EPSPS enzyme that confers the glyphosate-tolerant phenotype, but these variants are also characterized by a high K_(m) for PEP that makes the enzyme kinetically less efficient. For example, the apparent K_(m) for PEP and the apparent K_(i) for glyphosate for the native EPSPS from E. coli are 10 μM and 0.5 μM while for a glyphosate-resistant isolate having a single amino acid substitution of an alanine for the glycine at position 96 these values are 220 μM and 4.0 mM, respectively. U.S. Pat. No. 6,040,497 reports that the mutation known as the TIPS mutation (a substitution of isoleucine for threonine at amino acid position 102 and a substitution of serine for proline at amino acid position 106) comprises two mutations that when introduced into the polypeptide sequence of Zea mays EPSPS confers glyphosate resistance to the enzyme. Transgenic plants containing this mutant enzyme are tolerant to glyphosate. Identical mutations may be made in glyphosate sensitive EPSPS enzymes from other plant sources to create glyphosate resistant enzymes.

A variety of native and variant EPSPS enzymes have been expressed in transgenic plants in order to confer glyphosate tolerance (Singh, et al., In “Biosynthesis and Molecular Regulation of Amino Acids in Plants”, Amer Soc Plant Phys. Pubs., 1992). Examples of some of these EPSPSs include those described and/or isolated in accordance with U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,940,835, 4,971,908, 5,145,783, 5,188,642, 5,310,667, and 5,312,910. They can also be derived from a structurally distinct class of non-homologous EPSPS genes, such as the class II EPSPS genes isolated from Agrobacterium sp. strain CP4 as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,633,435 and 5,627,061.

Chloroplast transit peptides (CTPs) are engineered to be fused to the N terminus of the bacterial EPSPS to direct the glyphosate resistant enzymes into the plant chloroplast. In the native plant EPSPS, chloroplast transit peptide regions are contained in the native coding sequence (e.g., CTP2, Klee et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 210:47-442, 1987, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). The native CTP may be substituted with a heterologous CTP during construction of a transgene plant expression cassette. Many chloroplast-localized proteins, including EPSPS, are expressed from nuclear genes as precursors and are targeted to the chloroplast by a chloroplast transit peptide (CTP) that is removed during the import steps. Examples of other such chloroplast proteins include the small subunit (SSU) of Ribulose-1,5,-bisphosphate carboxylase, Ferredoxin, Ferredoxin oxidoreductase, the light-harvesting complex protein I and protein II, and Thioredoxin F. It has been demonstrated in vivo and in vitro that non-chloroplast proteins may be targeted to the chloroplast by use of protein fusions with a CTP and that a CTP sequence is sufficient to target a protein to the chloroplast. Incorporation of a suitable chloroplast transit peptide, such as, the Arabidopsis thaliana EPSPS CTP (Klee et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 210:437-442 (1987), and the Petunia hybrida EPSPS CTP (della-Cioppa et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 83:6873-6877 (1986) has been shown to target heterologous EPSPS protein sequences to chloroplasts in transgenic plants. The production of glyphosate tolerant plants by expression of a fusion protein comprising an amino-terminal CTP with a glyphosate resistant EPSPS enzyme is well known by those skilled in the art, (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,627,061, 5,633,435, 5,312,910, EP 0218571, EP 189707, EP 508909, and EP 924299). Those skilled in the art will recognize that various chimeric constructs can be made that utilize the functionality of a particular CTP to import glyphosate resistant EPSPS enzymes into the plant cell chloroplast.

Modification and changes may be made in the structure of the polynucleotides of the invention and still obtain a molecule that encodes a functional protein or peptide with desirable characteristics. The following is a method based upon substituting the codon(s) of a first polynucleotide to create an equivalent, or even an improved, second-generation artificial polynucleotide, where this new artificial polynucleotide is useful in methods of transgene gene stacking and enhanced expression. It is contemplated that the codon substitutions in the second-generation polynucleotide can in certain instances result in at least one amino acid different from that of the first polynucleotide. The amino acid substitution may provide an improved characteristic to the protein, e.g., a glyphosate resistant EPSP synthase, or it may be a conserved change that does not substantially affect the characteristics of the protein. The method provides for an artificial polynucleotide created by the backtranslation of a polypeptide sequence into a polynucleotide using a codon usage table, followed by steps to enhance characteristics of the artificial polypeptide that make it particularly useful in transgenic plants.

In particular embodiments of the invention, modified polypeptides encoding herbicide is resistant proteins are contemplated to be useful for at least one of the following: to confer herbicide tolerance in a transformed or transgenic plant, to improve expression of herbicide resistance genes in plants, for use as selectable markers for introduction of other traits of interest into a plant, and to prevent recombination with a similar endogenous plant gene or existing transgene further allowing gene stacking without gene silencing.

It is known that the genetic code is degenerate. The amino acids and their RNA codon(s) are listed below in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Amino acids and the RNA codons that encode them. Amino Acid Full name; 3 letter code; 1 letter code Codons Alanine; Ala; A GCA GCC GCG GCU Cysteine; Cys; C UGC UGU Aspartic acid; Asp; D GAC GAU Glutamic acid; Glu; E GAA GAG Phenylalanine; Phe; F UUC UUU Glycine; Gly; G GGA GGC GGG GGU Histidine; His; H CAC CAU Isoleucine; Ile; I AUA AUC AUU Lysine; Lys; K AAA AAG Leucine; Leu; L UUA UUG CUA CUC CUG CUU Methionine; Met; M AUG Asparagine; Asn; N AAC AAU Proline; Pro; P CCA CCC CCG CCU Glutamine; Gln; Q CAA CAG Arginine; Arg; R AGA AGG CGA CGC CGG CGU Serine; Ser; S AGC AGU UCA UCC UCG UCU Threonine; Thr; T ACA ACC ACG ACU Valine; Val; V GUA GUC GUG GUU Tryptophan; Trp; W UGG Tyrosine; Tyr; Y UAC UAU

The codons are described in terms of RNA bases, e.g. adenine, uracil, guanine and cytosine, it is the mRNA that is directly translated into polypeptides. It is understood that when designing a DNA polynucleotide for use in a construct, the DNA bases would be substituted, e.g. thymine instead of uracil.

It is desirable to provide transgenic plants that have multiple agronomically improved phenotypes. Often herbicide tolerance is used as a selectable marker to assist in the production of transgenic plants that may possess additional genes of agronomic importance. The stacking of the transgenes by traditional breeding methods or by retransformation of a first transgenic plant with an additional plant expression cassette may include the introduction of genes or genetic elements that have identical or nearly identical polynucleotide sequence. The progeny containing these stacked genes may be susceptible to loss of gene expression due to gene silencing. The method of the present invention provides a modified polynucleotide molecule that encodes a herbicide resistant protein. The polynucleotide molecules are designed to be sufficiently divergent in polynucleotide sequence from other polynucleotide molecules that encode the same herbicide resistance protein. These molecules can then coexist in the same plant cell without the concern of gene silencing.

The divergent polynucleotide sequence is created by using a codon usage table built from the known coding sequences of various plant species. For example, codon usage tables for Arabidopsis thaliana, Zea mays, and Glycine max can be used in the method to design the polynucleotides of the present invention. Other codon usage tables from other plants can also be used by those of ordinary skill in the art.

The first step in the method for designing a new artificial polynucleotide molecule that encodes a herbicide tolerance protein is the use of a codon usage table to determine the percent codon usage in a plant species for each amino acid of the herbicide tolerance protein, followed by replacing at least one of every eight contiguous codons with a different codon selected from the codon usage table and adjusting the percent codon usage for each amino acid encoded by the polynucleotide to substantially the same percent codon usage found in the codon usage table. Additional steps can include introducing a translational stop codon in the second and third open reading frame of the new polynucleotide sequence; eliminating some translational start codons in the second and third open reading frames; adjusting the local GC:AT ratio to about 2:1 over a is range of about 50 nucleotides; disrupting potential polyadenylation signals or potential intron splice sites; removing at least one restriction enzyme site of six contiguous nucleotides or greater; and comparing the sequence identity of the new artificial polynucleotide to an existing polynucleotide that encodes the same or similar protein so that the sequence identity between the two polynucleotides is not more than 85 percent.

A back translation of a protein sequence to a nucleotide sequence maybe performed using a codon usage table, such as those found on Genetics Computer Group (GCG) SeqLab or other DNA analysis programs known to those skilled in the art of DNA analysis or as provided in Tables 2, 3 and 4 of the present invention. The codon usage table for Arabidopsis thaliana (Table 2), Zea mays (Table 3) and Glycine max (Table 4) are examples of tables that can be constructed for plant species, codon usage tables can also be constructed that represent monocot or dicot codon usage.

TABLE 2 Arabidopsis thaliana codon usage table. Amino Acid Codon Number /1000 Fraction Gly GGG 188335.00 10.18 0.16 Gly GGA 443469.00 23.98 0.37 Gly GGT 409478.00 22.14 0.34 Gly GGC 167099.00 9.03 0.14 Glu GAG 596506.00 32.25 0.48 Glu GAA 639579.00 34.58 0.52 Asp GAT 683652.00 36.96 0.68 Asp GAC 318211.00 17.20 0.32 Val GTG 320636.00 17.34 0.26 Val GTA 185889.00 10.05 0.15 Val GTT 505487.00 27.33 0.41 Val GTC 235004.00 12.71 0.19 Ala GCG 162272.00 8.77 0.14 Ala GCA 323871.00 17.51 0.27 Ala GCT 521181.00 28.18 0.44 Ala GCC 189049.00 10.22 0.16 Arg AGG 202204.00 10.93 0.20 Arg AGA 348508.00 18.84 0.35 Ser AGT 260896.00 14.11 0.16 Ser AGC 206774.00 11.18 0.13 Lys AAG 605882.00 32.76 0.51 Lys AAA 573121.00 30.99 0.49 Asn AAT 418805.00 22.64 0.52 Asn AAC 385650.00 20.85 0.48 Met ATG 452482.00 24.46 1.00 Ile ATA 235528.00 12.73 0.24 Ile ATT 404070.00 21.85 0.41 Ile ATC 341584.00 18.47 0.35 Thr ACG 140880.00 7.62 0.15 Thr ACA 291436.00 15.76 0.31 Thr ACT 326366.00 17.65 0.34 Thr ACC 190135.00 10.28 0.20 Trp TGG 231618.00 12.52 1.00 End TGA 19037.00 1.03 0.43 Cys TGT 196601.00 10.63 0.60 Cys TGC 131390.00 7.10 0.40 End TAG 9034.00 0.49 0.20 End TAA 16317.00 0.88 0.37 Tyr TAT 276714.00 14.96 0.52 Tyr TAC 254890.00 13.78 0.48 Leu TTG 389368.00 21.05 0.22 Leu TTA 237547.00 12.84 0.14 Phe TTT 410976.00 22.22 0.52 Phe TTC 380505.00 20.57 0.48 Ser TCG 167804.00 9.07 0.10 Ser TCA 334881.00 18.11 0.20 Ser TCT 461774.00 24.97 0.28 Ser TCC 203174.00 10.99 0.12 Arg CGG 88712.00 4.80 0.09 Arg CGA 115857.00 6.26 0.12 Arg CGT 165276.00 8.94 0.17 Arg CGC 69006.00 3.73 0.07 Gln CAG 280077.00 15.14 0.44 Gln CAA 359922.00 19.46 0.56 His CAT 256758.00 13.88 0.62 His CAC 160485.00 8.68 0.38 Leu CTG 183128.00 9.90 0.11 Leu CTA 184587.00 9.98 0.11 Leu CTT 447606.00 24.20 0.26 Leu CTC 294275.00 15.91 0.17 Pro CCG 155222.00 8.39 0.17 Pro CCA 298880.00 16.16 0.33 Pro CCT 342406.00 18.51 0.38 Pro CCC 97639.00 5.28 0.11

TABLE 3 Zea mays codon usage table Amino Acid Codon Number /1000 Fraction Gly GGG 8069.00 15.19 0.21 Gly GGA 7100.00 13.37 0.18 Gly GGT 7871.00 14.82 0.20 Gly GGC 15904.00 29.94 0.41 Glu GAG 22129.00 41.67 0.68 Glu GAA 10298.00 19.39 0.32 Asp GAT 11996.00 22.59 0.41 Asp GAC 17045.00 32.09 0.59 Val GTG 13873.00 26.12 0.38 Val GTA 3230.00 6.08 0.09 Val GTT 8261.00 15.55 0.23 Val GTC 11330.00 21.33 0.31 Ala GCG 11778.00 22.18 0.24 Ala GCA 8640.00 16.27 0.18 Ala GCT 11940.00 22.48 0.24 Ala GCC 16768.00 31.57 0.34 Arg AGG 7937.00 14.94 0.27 Arg AGA 4356.00 8.20 0.15 Ser AGT 3877.00 7.30 0.10 Ser AGC 8653.00 16.29 0.23 Lys AAG 22367.00 42.11 0.74 Lys AAA 7708.00 14.51 0.26 Asn AAT 6997.00 13.17 0.36 Asn AAC 12236.00 23.04 0.64 Met ATG 12841.00 24.18 1.00 Ile ATA 3997.00 7.53 0.16 Ile ATT 7457.00 14.04 0.31 Ile ATC 12925.00 24.34 0.53 Thr ACG 5665.00 10.67 0.22 Thr ACA 5408.00 10.18 0.21 Thr ACT 5774.00 10.87 0.22 Thr ACC 9256.00 17.43 0.35 Trp TGG 6695.00 12.61 1.00 End TGA 591.00 1.11 0.45 Cys TGT 2762.00 5.20 0.30 Cys TGC 6378.00 12.01 0.70 End TAG 411.00 0.77 0.32 End TAA 299.00 0.56 0.23 Tyr TAT 4822.00 9.08 0.31 Tyr TAC 10546.00 19.86 0.69 Leu TTG 6677.00 12.57 0.14 Leu TTA 2784.00 5.24 0.06 Phe TTT 6316.00 11.89 0.32 Phe TTC 13362.00 25.16 0.68 Ser TCG 5556.00 10.46 0.14 Ser TCA 5569.00 10.49 0.15 Ser TCT 6149.00 11.58 0.16 Ser TCC 8589.00 16.17 0.22 Arg CGG 4746.00 8.94 0.16 Arg CGA 2195.00 4.13 0.07 Arg CGT 3113.00 5.86 0.10 Arg CGC 7374.00 13.88 0.25 Gln CAG 13284.00 25.01 0.64 Gln CAA 7632.00 14.37 0.36 His CAT 5003.00 9.42 0.39 His CAC 7669.00 14.44 0.61 Leu CTG 13327.00 25.09 0.28 Leu CTA 3785.00 7.13 0.08 Leu CTT 8238.00 15.51 0.17 Leu CTC 12942.00 24.37 0.27 Pro CCG 8274.00 15.58 0.27 Pro CCA 7845.00 14.77 0.26 Pro CCT 7129.00 13.42 0.23 Pro CCC 7364.00 13.87 0.24

TABLE 4 Glycine max codon usage table Amino Acid Codon Number /1000 Fraction Gly GGG 3097.00 12.82 0.18 Gly GGA 5434.00 22.49 0.32 Gly GGT 5248.00 21.72 0.31 Gly GGC 3339.00 13.82 0.20 Glu GAG 8296.00 34.33 0.50 Glu GAA 8194.00 33.91 0.50 Asp GAT 7955.00 32.92 0.62 Asp GAC 4931.00 20.40 0.38 Val GTG 5342.00 22.11 0.32 Val GTA 1768.00 7.32 0.11 Val GTT 6455.00 26.71 0.39 Val GTC 2971.00 12.29 0.18 Ala GCG 1470.00 6.08 0.08 Ala GCA 5421.00 22.43 0.31 Ala GCT 6796.00 28.12 0.38 Ala GCC 4042.00 16.73 0.23 Arg AGG 3218.00 13.32 0.28 Arg AGA 3459.00 14.31 0.30 Ser AGT 2935.00 12.15 0.17 Ser AGC 2640.00 10.92 0.15 Lys AAG 9052.00 37.46 0.59 Lys AAA 6370.00 26.36 0.41 Asn AAT 5132.00 21.24 0.48 Asn AAC 5524.00 22.86 0.52 Met ATG 5404.00 22.36 1.00 Ile ATA 3086.00 12.77 0.23 Ile ATT 6275.00 25.97 0.47 Ile ATC 3981.00 16.47 0.30 Thr ACG 1006.00 4.16 0.08 Thr ACA 3601.00 14.90 0.29 Thr ACT 4231.00 17.51 0.34 Thr ACC 3562.00 14.74 0.29 Trp TGG 2866.00 11.86 1.00 End TGA 221.00 0.91 0.36 Cys TGT 1748.00 7.23 0.49 Cys TGC 1821.00 7.54 0.51 End TAG 143.00 0.59 0.23 End TAA 256.00 1.06 0.41 Tyr TAT 3808.00 15.76 0.51 Tyr TAC 3667.00 15.17 0.49 Leu TTG 5343.00 22.11 0.24 Leu TTA 2030.00 8.40 0.09 Phe TTT 4964.00 20.54 0.49 Phe TTC 5067.00 20.97 0.51 Ser TCG 1107.00 4.58 0.06 Ser TCA 3590.00 14.86 0.21 Ser TCT 4238.00 17.54 0.24 Ser TCC 2949.00 12.20 0.17 Arg CGG 683.00 2.83 0.06 Arg CGA 964.00 3.99 0.08 Arg CGT 1697.00 7.02 0.15 Arg CGC 1538.00 6.36 0.13 Gln CAG 4147.00 17.16 0.46 Gln CAA 4964.00 20.54 0.54 His CAT 3254.00 13.47 0.55 His CAC 2630.00 10.88 0.45 Leu CTG 2900.00 12.00 0.13 Leu CTA 1962.00 8.12 0.09 Leu CTT 5676.00 23.49 0.26 Leu CTC 4053.00 16.77 0.18 Pro CCG 1022.00 4.23 0.08 Pro CCA 4875.00 20.17 0.37 Pro CCT 4794.00 19.84 0.36 Pro CCC 2445.00 10.12 0.19

Codon usage tables are well known in the art and can be found in gene databases e.g., Genbank database. The Codon Usage Database is an extended WWW version of CUTG (Codon Usage Tabulated from Genbank). The frequency of codon usage in each organism is made searchable through this World Wide Web site (Nakamura et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 28:292, 2000).

In various embodiments of the invention, the steps may be performed in any order or simultaneously. Any or all of the steps may be performed in the design of an artificial polynucleotide of the invention. Each step is described in detail below.

Different codons for a particular amino acid should be distributed throughout the polynucleotide based on approximate percentage codon usage for particular species from a codon usage table. Local cluster of identical codons should be avoided. At least one codon is substituted for every eight contiguous codons to provide sufficient divergence of polynucleotide sequences that encode identical or similar proteins. Except where specifically desired, e.g. to provide a herbicide tolerant enzyme, the encoded protein remains unchanged by substituting one codon for another codon that is translated to the same amino acid as listed in Table 1.

In embodiments of the present invention, corrections are made to the local GC:AT ratio of a polynucleotide by adjusting local GC:AT ratio to be about the same ratio as the full length is polynucleotide, but not higher than 2× over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides of the polynucleotide molecule. The range of GC:AT ratios of a polynucleotide using codon usage tables from dicot plants should be from about 0.9 to about 1.3, and for monocot plants from about 1.2 to about 1.7. The local GC:AT ratio may be important in maintenance of appropriate secondary structure of RNA. Regions comprising many consecutive A+T bases or G+C bases are predicted to have a higher likelihood to form hairpin structures due to self-complementarity. Therefore, replacement with a different codon would reduce the likelihood of self-complementary secondary structure formation, which is known to reduce transcription and/or translation in some organisms. In most cases, the adverse effects may be minimized by using polynucleotide molecules that do not contain more than five consecutive A+T or G+C. The maximum length of local GC track (without any AT nucleotide) should be no longer than 10 nucleotides. Therefore codons encoding Gly, Ala, Arg, Ser, and Pro rich proteins can be substituted to prevent long clusters of GC nucleotides. The listed GC rich codons may be used in combination with the AT rich codons for amino acids Lys, Asn, Ile, Tyr, Leu, Phe and vice versa to correct local GC:AT ratio.

A sequence identity check using nucleotide sequence alignment tools such as GAP program (GCG, Madison, Wis.) can be done immediately after back translation to insure that the generated sequence has appropriate degree of sequence diversity. Contiguous polynucleotide sequence longer than 23 nucleotides having one hundred percent sequence identity should be eliminated by making codon substitutions in these lengths of sequence.

The translational start codons (ATG from the DNA, AUG in the mRNA) present in the second reading frame (frame “b”), the third reading frame (frame “c”), and the reverse reading frames (frame “d”, “e”, “f”). The second and third frame start codons may initiate translation, however much less efficiently than the first. Therefore, if one or two AUG are found near the 5′ end of an mRNA molecule reside in frame “b” or “c” it would be beneficial to eliminate them in a polynucleotide region that contains at least the first three Met codons in frame “a”. Also, if protein sequence does not have more than one Met in frame “a”, then eliminate as many as possible from the “b” or “c” forward frames. To perform this, for example, the codons for amino acids, Asp, Asn, Tyr, His in the protein of interest followed by any of the amino acids: Gly, Glu, Asp, Val, or Ala, can be substituted to eliminate a start codon in the second frame. The sequence GATGGG encodes the amino acids Asp-Gly and forms an ATG in the reading frame “b”. When the sequence is modified to GACGGG, the ATG start is eliminated and the sequence still is encodes Asp-Gly. A similar strategy is used to eliminate start codons in the reading frame “c”. The combination of an amino acid selected from the group of Gly, Glu, Val, Ala, Arg, Lys, Ile, Thr, Cys, Tyr, Leu, Ser, His or Pro followed by Trp can result in formation on ATG in third reading frame of the gene. In this situation, the first codon can be changed to have a nucleotide other than A in third position.

The elimination of ATG codon in the complementary DNA strand of the gene in alternate frames (“d”, “e”, and/or “f”) without changing amino acid sequence of the protein can be accomplished in a similar manner. This modification reduces the probability of translation even if the transgene is integrated into a plant genome in an orientation that allows transcription of the reverse complement mRNA from a native plant promoter. Translation from any reverse reading frame can be minimized by introduction of a stop codon in all three reverse reading frames as described below.

The creation of stop codons to all three frames of the complementary DNA can be accomplished as follows. The Leu (TTA and CTA) and Ser codon (TCA) produce three different stop codons in reverse complement strand. If those amino acids can be found at the C terminus of the protein of interest, their codons may used to generate stops in the complementary strand in the reading frame “d”. To generate a stop codon in the reading frame “e” of complementary strand, find amino acids Ala, Arg, Asn, Asp, Cys, Gly, His, Ile, Leu Phe, Pro, Ser, Thr, Tyr, or Val followed by amino acids Gln, His or Tyr the protein of interest. For example, polynucleotide sequence of GCCCAC that encode for amino acids Ala-His can be modified to GCTCAC. The complementary sequence, GTGAGC, will have now TGA stop codon shown in italics. When the protein of interest has a Ala, Ile, Leu, Phe, Pro, Ser, Thr or Val followed by an Arg, Asn, Ile, Lys, Met, or Ser the reading frame in the complementary strand can be modified to have a stop codon in the reading frame “f” of the complementary strand. The polynucleotide sequence ATATCT for Ile and Ser can be modified to ATCAGT to generate stop codon in complementary strand as shown in italics, ACTGAT. The combination of codons for Phe followed by any of the codons for amino acids Asn, Ile, Lys, Met or Thr will always generate stop codon in complementary strand frame “e” or “f”.

To create a stop codon in the forward reading frame “b”, the reading frame a must end on nucleotides TA or TG. Search the protein of interest for the amino acids Ile, Leu, Met or Val in combination with any of the following amino acids: Ala, Arg, Asn Asp, Glu, Gly, Ile, Lys, Met, Ser, Thr or Val. For example, if the polynucleotide sequence encoding the amino acids Met-Ser is ATGTCT, it can be modified to ATGAGT to produce a TGA stop codon in second reading frame.

To be able to create a stop codon to the reading frame “c”, the reading frame “a” must have the nucleotide T in third position and next codon must start from AA, AG or GA. To find suitable codons to modify, search the protein of interest for any of the amino acids: Ala, Asn, Asp, Arg, Cys, Gly, His, Ile, Leu Phe, Pro, Ser, Thr, Tyr or Val follow by any of the following amino acids: Arg, Asn, Asp, Glu, Lys or Ser. For example, if the nucleotide sequence for amino acids Gly-Glu is GGAGAG, the sequence can be modified to GGTGAG to create a TGA stop codon in the third reading frame.

Another useful modification in artificial polynucleotide design methods of the present invention is to eliminate unwanted restriction sites and other specific sequence patterns. Restriction sites may interfere with future gene cloning and manipulations. For example, some restriction sites commonly used in gene cloning include, but are not limited, to the Type II restriction enzymes with 6 or more non-N bases listed in Table 5 below which is an excerpt from the New England Biolabs, Inc. (Beverly, Mass., USA) restriction endonuclease database. The search for restriction enzyme recognition sites can be done using Map function application found in GCG SeqLab or a similar application contained in other DNA analysis programs known to those skilled in the art of DNA analysis. The restriction enzymes can be also added to the sequence to facilitate cloning. For example, The ClaI restriction site is placed in CP4EPSPS version AT (SEQ ID NO:17) and ZM (SEQ ID NO:18) to generate recombinant sequences by fragment exchange and to facilitate gene synthesis using nucleotide fragments that can be assemble to the whole gene. The transit peptide CTP2 polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO:12) is connected with CP4EPSPS by SphI restriction site to facilitate substitution of CTP2 with different nucleotide versions of CTP2 (SEQ ID NO:13, SEQ ID NO:14) or polynucleotides encoding different chloroplast transit peptides. For example, in the rice EPSPS, the NgaMIV restriction site is preserved at about nucleotide position 205 in all artificial versions to facilitate chloroplast transit peptide coding region exchange. Also, for soybean EPSPS the polynucleotide sequence for the chloroplast transit peptide is separated from the mature peptide by the restriction site for SacII endonuclease.

It is understood that modification of endonuclease restriction sites is not required, but is useful for further manipulation of the DNA molecules. Table 5 provides a list of restriction endonucleases, those of particular interest to the present invention are marked with an asterisk. Other endonuclease restriction sites desirable for elimination or addition to an artificial polynucleotide of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art and are not limited to those listed in Table 5.

TABLE 5 Restriction enzymes recognition sequences Recognition Enzymes Sequence AatII G_ACGT{circumflex over ( )}C *AccI GT{circumflex over ( )}MK_AC Acc65I G{circumflex over ( )}GTAC_C AceII G_CTAG{circumflex over ( )}C- AclI AA{circumflex over ( )}CG_TT AcyI GR{circumflex over ( )}CG_YC AfeI AGC{circumflex over ( )}GCT AflII C{circumflex over ( )}TTAA_G *AflIII A{circumflex over ( )}CRYG_T AgeI A{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_T AhaIII TTT{circumflex over ( )}AAA ApaI G_GGCC{circumflex over ( )}C ApaLI G{circumflex over ( )}TGCA_C ApoI R{circumflex over ( )}AATT_Y AscI GG{circumflex over ( )}CGCG_CC AseI AT{circumflex over ( )}TA_AT AsiSI GCG_AT{circumflex over ( )}CGC AsuII TT{circumflex over ( )}CG_AA AvaI C{circumflex over ( )}YCGR_G AvaIII ATGCAT AvrII C{circumflex over ( )}CTAG_G BalI TGG{circumflex over ( )}CCA *BamHI G{circumflex over ( )}GATC_C BanI G{circumflex over ( )}GYRC_C BanII G_RGCY{circumflex over ( )}C *BbeI G_GCGC{circumflex over ( )}C BbvCI CC{circumflex over ( )}TCA_GC *Bc1I T{circumflex over ( )}GATC_A BetI W{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_W BfrBI ATG{circumflex over ( )}CAT *Bg1II A{circumflex over ( )}GATC_T BloHII CTGCA{circumflex over ( )}G BlpI GC{circumflex over ( )}TNA_GC Bme1580I G_KGCM{circumflex over ( )}C BmgI GKGCCC Bpu10I CC{circumflex over ( )}TNA_GC BsaI GGTCTCN{circumflex over ( )}NNNN_ BsaAI YAC{circumflex over ( )}GTR BsaHI GR{circumflex over ( )}CG_YC BsaWI W{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_W BsbI CAACAC BsePI G{circumflex over ( )}CGCG_C BseSI G_KGCM{circumflex over ( )}C BsiI C{circumflex over ( )}ACGA_G BsiEI CG_RY{circumflex over ( )}CG BsiWI C{circumflex over ( )}GTAC_G BsmI GAATG_CN{circumflex over ( )} Bsp1286I G_DGCH{circumflex over ( )}C Bsp1407I T{circumflex over ( )}GTAC_A BspEI T{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_A BspGI CTGGAC BspHI T{circumflex over ( )}CATG_A BspLU11I A{circumflex over ( )}CATC_T BspMII T{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_A BsrBI CCG{circumflex over ( )}CTC BsrDI GCAATG_NN{circumflex over ( )} BsrFI R{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_Y BsrGI T{circumflex over ( )}GTAC_A BssHII G{circumflex over ( )}CGCGT_C BssSI C{circumflex over ( )}ACGA_G BstAPI GCAN_NNN{circumflex over ( )}NTGC BstBI TT{circumflex over ( )}CG_AA BstEII GA{circumflex over ( )}TNAC_C BstXI CCAN_NNNN{circumflex over ( )}NTGG BstYI R{circumflex over ( )}GATC_Y BstZ17I GTA{circumflex over ( )}TAC Bsu36I CC{circumflex over ( )}TNNA_GG BtgI C{circumflex over ( )}CRYG_G BtrI CAC{circumflex over ( )}GTC BtsI GCAGTG_NNA{circumflex over ( )} CfrI Y{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_R Cfr10I R{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_Y *ClaI AT{circumflex over ( )}CG_AT DraI TTT{circumflex over ( )}AAA DraII RG{circumflex over ( )}GNC_CY DrdII GAACCA DsaI C{circumflex over ( )}CRYG_G EaeI Y{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_R EagI C{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_G Ecl136II GAG{circumflex over ( )}CTC Eco47III AGC{circumflex over ( )}GCT EcoNI CCTNN{circumflex over ( )}N_NNAGG EcoO109I RG{circumflex over ( )}GNC_CY *EcoRI G{circumflex over ( )}AATT_C *EcoRV GAT{circumflex over ( )}ATC EspI GC{circumflex over ( )}TNA_GC *FseI GG_CCGG{circumflex over ( )}CC *FspI TGC{circumflex over ( )}GCA FspAI RTGC{circumflex over ( )}GCAY GdiII C{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_R HaeI WGG{circumflex over ( )}CCW HaeII R_GCGC{circumflex over ( )}Y HgiAI G_WGCW{circumflex over ( )}C HgiCI G{circumflex over ( )}GYRC_C HgiJII G_RGCY{circumflex over ( )}C *HincII GTY{circumflex over ( )}RAC HindII GTY{circumflex over ( )}RAC *HindIII A AGCT_T *HpaI GTT{circumflex over ( )}AAC KasI G{circumflex over ( )}GCGC_C *KpnI G_GTAC{circumflex over ( )}C LpnI RGC{circumflex over ( )}GCY McrI CG_RY{circumflex over ( )}CG MfeI C{circumflex over ( )}AATT_G *MluI A{circumflex over ( )}CGCG_T MscI TGG{circumflex over ( )}CCA MspAlI CMG{circumflex over ( )}CKG MstI TGC{circumflex over ( )}GCA NaeI GCC{circumflex over ( )}GGC NarI GG{circumflex over ( )}CG_CC *NcoI C{circumflex over ( )}CATG_G *NdeI CA{circumflex over ( )}TA_TG *NgoMIV G{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_C *NheI G{circumflex over ( )}CTAG_C Nli3877I C_YCGR{circumflex over ( )}G *NotI GC{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_GC *NruI TCG{circumflex over ( )}CGA *NsiI A_TGCA{circumflex over ( )}T NspI R_CATG{circumflex over ( )}Y NspBII CMG{circumflex over ( )}CKG *PacI TTA_AT{circumflex over ( )}TAA *PciI A{circumflex over ( )}CATG_T Pfl11081 TCGTAG *PflMI CCAN_NNN{circumflex over ( )}NTGG PmaCI CAC{circumflex over ( )}GTG PmeI GTTT{circumflex over ( )}AAAC PmlI CAC{circumflex over ( )}GTG Ppu10I A{circumflex over ( )}TGCA_T *PpuMI RG{circumflex over ( )}GWC_CY PshAI GACNN{circumflex over ( )}RNGTC PsiI TTA{circumflex over ( )}TAA *PspOMI G{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_C PssI RG_GNC{circumflex over ( )}CY *PstI C_TGCA{circumflex over ( )}G *PvuI CG_AT{circumflex over ( )}CG *PvuII CAG{circumflex over ( )}CTG RsrII CG{circumflex over ( )}GWC_CG *SacI G_AGCT{circumflex over ( )}C *SacII CC_GC{circumflex over ( )}GG *SalI G{circumflex over ( )}TCGA_C SanDI GG{circumflex over ( )}GWC_CC SapI GCTCTTCN{circumflex over ( )}NNN_ SauI CC{circumflex over ( )}TNA_GG SbfI CC_TGCA{circumflex over ( )}GG *ScaI AGT{circumflex over ( )}ACT SciI CTC{circumflex over ( )}GAG SduI G_DGCH{circumflex over ( )}C SexAI A{circumflex over ( )}CCWGG_T SfcI C{circumflex over ( )}TRYA_G SfeI C{circumflex over ( )}TRYA_G SfiI GGCCN_NNN{circumflex over ( )}NGGCC SfoI GGC{circumflex over ( )}GCC SgfI GCG_AT{circumflex over ( )}CGC SgrAI CR{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_YG *SmaI CCC{circumflex over ( )}GGG SmlI C{circumflex over ( )}TYRA_G SnaI GTATAC *SnaBI TAC{circumflex over ( )}GTA *SpeI A{circumflex over ( )}CTAG_T *SphI G_CATG{circumflex over ( )}C SplI C{circumflex over ( )}GTAC_G SrfI GCCC{circumflex over ( )}GGGC Sse232I CG{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_CG Sse83871 CC_TGCA{circumflex over ( )}GG Sse8647I AG{circumflex over ( )}GWC_CT *SspI AAT{circumflex over ( )}ATT *StuI AGG{circumflex over ( )}CCT *StyI C{circumflex over ( )}CWWG_G *SwaI ATTT{circumflex over ( )}AAAT TatI W{circumflex over ( )}GTAC_W UbaMI TCCNGGA UbaPI CGAACG *VspI AT{circumflex over ( )}TA_AT *XbaI T{circumflex over ( )}CTAG_A *XhoI C{circumflex over ( )}TCGA_G XhoII R{circumflex over ( )}GATC_Y *XmaI C{circumflex over ( )}CCGG_G XmaIII C{circumflex over ( )}GGCC_G XmnI GAANN{circumflex over ( )}NNTTC ZraI GAC{circumflex over ( )}GTC

A pattern search may be performed to find potential destabilizing sequences and polyadenylation sites and then disrupt or eliminate them as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,365. Certain long stretches of AT rich regions, e.g. the sequence motif ATTTA (or AUUUA, as it appears in RNA) have been implicated as a destabilizing sequence in mammalian cell mRNA (Shaw and Kamen, Cell 46:659-667, 1986). Many short lived mRNAs have A+T rich 3′ untranslated regions, and these regions often have the ATTTA sequence, sometimes present in multiple copies or as multimers (e.g., ATTTATTTA . . . ). Shaw and Kamen showed that the transfer of the 3′ end of an unstable mRNA to a stable RNA (globin or VA1) decreased the stable RNA's halflife dramatically. They further showed that a pentamer of ATTTA had a profound destabilizing effect on a stable message, and that this signal could exert its effect whether it is located at the 3′ end or within the coding sequence. However, the number of ATTTA sequences and/or the sequence context in which they occur also appear to be important in determining whether they function as destabilizing sequences. They also showed that a trimer of ATTTA had much less effect than a pentamer on mRNA stability and a dimer or a monomer is had no effect on stability. Note that multimers of ATTTA such as a pentamer automatically create an A+T rich region. In other unstable mRNAs, the ATTTA sequence may be present in only a single copy, but it is often contained in an A+T rich region. A repeat of 11 AUUUA pentamers has been shown to target reporter transcripts for rapid degradation in plants (Ohme-Takagi et al., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 90, 11811-11815, 1993). ATTTA sequence can be formed by combination of codons for amino acid Ile (ATT) and Tyr (TAT) as shown ATTTAT. Another example could be codons that end on AT as in Asn, Asp, His or Tyr, followed by TTA codon for Leu (e.g. AATTTA). Also codon for Phe (UUU) when placed between codons that ends on A and starts on A will form ATTTA motif. To eliminate this motif usually single nucleotide change is sufficient as in example shown: GCATTTAGC change to GCATTCAGC or GCCTTTAGC. All three polynucleotide shown code for Ala-Phe-Arg.

More cis-acting sequences that target transcript for rapid turnover in plants and in other system has been identified (Abler and Green, Plant Mol. Biol. 32:63-78, 1997). Those include the DST element that consist three highly conserved subdomains separated by two variable regions found downstream of the stop codon of SAUR transcripts (Newmaan et al., Plant Cell 5: 701-714, 1993). The second and third subdomains of DST elements contain residues that are invariant among DST elements and are termed ATAGAT and GTA, respectively. Both of those subdomains are necessary for DST function. New artificial polynucleotide sequences are screened for the presence of conserved motifs of DST elements. Those sequences are eliminated by base substitutions of codons preserving protein sequence encoded by the polynucleotide. The DST sequence motifs GGAG, ATAGAT, CATTT and GTAT that appeared in clusters or patterns similar to the conserved DST sequence are also eliminated by base substitutions.

Polynucleotide sequences that may possibly function as polyadenylation sites are eliminated in the new polynucleotide design (U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,365). These polyadenylation signals may not act as proper polyA sites, but instead function as aberrant sites that give rise to unstable mRNAs.

The addition of a polyadenylate string to the 3′ end of a mRNA is common to most eukaryotic mRNAs. Contained within this mRNA transcript are signals for polyadenylation and proper 3′ end formation. This processing at the 3′ end involves cleavage of the mRNA and addition of polyA to the mature 3′ end. By searching for consensus sequences near the polyA tract in both plant and animal mRNAs, it has been possible to identify consensus sequences that apparently are involved in polyA addition and 3′ end cleavage. The same consensus sequences seem to be important to both of these processes. These signals are typically a variation on the sequence AATAAA. In animal cells, some variants of this sequence that are functional have been identified; in plant cells there seems to be an extended range of functional sequences (Dean et al., Nucl Acid Res., 14:2229-2240, 1986; Hunt, Annu Rev. Plant Physiol. Plant Mol. Biol. 45:47-60, 1994; Rothine, Plant Mol. Biol. 32:43-61, 1996). All of these consensus sequences are variations on AATAAA, therefore, they all are A+T rich sequences.

Typically, to obtain sufficient expression of modified transgenes in plants, existing structural polynucleotide coding sequence (“structural gene”) that encodes for the protein of interest is modified by removal of ATTTA sequences and putative polyadenylation signals by site directed mutagenesis of the DNA comprising the structural gene. Substantially all of the known polyadenylation signals and ATTTA sequences are removed in the modified polynucleotide, although enhanced expression levels are often observed with only removal of some of the above identified polyadenylation signal sequences. Alternately, if an artificial polynucleotide is prepared that encodes for the subject protein, codons are selected to avoid the ATTTA sequence and putative polyadenylation signals. For purposes of the present invention putative polyadenylation signals include, but are not necessarily limited to, AATAAA, AATAAT, AACCAA, ATATAA, AATCAA, ATACTA, ATAAAA, ATGAAA, AAGCAT, ATTAAT, ATACAT, AAAATA, ATTAAA, AATTAA, AATACA and CATAAA.

The selected DNA sequence is scanned to identify regions with greater than four consecutive adenine (A) or thymine (T) nucleotides. The A+T regions are scanned for potential plant polyadenylation signals. Although the absence of five or more consecutive A or T nucleotides eliminates most plant polyadenylation signals, if there are more than one of the minor polyadenylation signals identified within ten nucleotides of each other, then the nucleotide sequence of this region is altered to remove these signals while maintaining the original encoded amino acid sequence.

The next step is to consider the about 15 to about 30 or so nucleotide residues surrounding the A+T rich region. If the A+T content of the surrounding region is less than 80%, the region should be examined for polyadenylation signals. Alteration of the region based on polyadenylation signals is dependent upon (1) the number of polyadenylation signals present and (2) presence of a major plant polyadenylation signal. The polyadenylation signals are removed by base substitution of the DNA sequence in the context of codon replacement.

Two additional patterns not identified in U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,365, are searched for and eliminated in embodiments of the present invention. The sequences AGGTAA and GCAGGT are consensus sequences for intron 5′ and 3′ splice sites, respectively, in monocot plants and dicot plants. Only GT of the 5′ splice site and the AG in the 3′ splice site are required to be an exact match. However, when conducting a search for these consensus sequences, no mismatch is allowed for each base.

After each step sequence mapping is done using MAP program from GCG to determine location of the open reading frames and identify sequence patterns that further need to be modified. The final step would be to perform sequence identity analysis using for example the GAP program from GCG package to determine degree of sequence divergence and percent identity.

Polypeptides

Generally, the translated protein of the artificial polynucleotide will have the same amino acid sequence as the protein translated from the unmodified coding region. However, the substitution of codons that encode for amino acids that provide a functional homologue of the protein is an aspect of the invention. For example, certain amino acids may be substituted for other amino acids in a protein structure without appreciable loss of interactive binding capacity with structures such as, for example, antigen-binding regions of antibodies or binding sites on substrate molecules. Since it is the interactive capacity and nature of a protein that defines that protein's biological functional activity, certain amino acid sequence substitutions can be made in a protein sequence, and, of course, its underlying DNA coding sequence, and nevertheless obtain a protein with like properties. It is thus contemplated by the inventors that various changes may be made in the peptide sequences of the disclosed compositions by making changes in the corresponding DNA sequences that encode the peptides in which the peptides shown no appreciable loss of their biological utility or activity.

A further aspect of the invention comprises functional homologues, which differ in one or more amino acids from those of a polypeptide provided herein as the result of one or more conservative amino acid substitutions. It is well known in the art that one or more amino acids in a native sequence can be substituted with at least one other amino acid, the charge and polarity of which are similar to that of the native amino acid, resulting in a silent change. For instance, valine is a conservative substitute for alanine and threonine is a conservative substitute for serine. Conservative substitutions for an amino acid within the native polypeptide sequence can be selected from other members of the class to which the naturally occurring amino acid belongs. Amino acids can be divided into the following four groups: (1) acidic amino acids, (2) basic amino acids, (3) neutral polar amino acids, and (4) neutral nonpolar amino acids. Representative amino acids within these various groups include, but are not limited to: (1) acidic (negatively charged) amino acids such as aspartic acid and glutamic acid; (2) basic (positively charged) amino acids such as arginine, histidine, and lysine; (3) neutral polar amino acids such as glycine, serine, threonine, cysteine, tyrosine, asparagine, and glutamine; and (4) neutral nonpolar (hydrophobic) amino acids such as alanine, leucine, isoleucine, valine, proline, phenylalanine, tryptophan, and methionine. Conserved substitutes for an amino acid within a native amino acid sequence can be selected from other members of the group to which the naturally occurring amino acid belongs. For example, a group of amino acids having aliphatic side chains is glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, and isoleucine; a group of amino acids having aliphatic-hydroxyl side chains is serine and threonine; a group of amino acids having amide-containing side chains is asparagine and glutamine; a group of amino acids having aromatic side chains is phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan; a group of amino acids having basic side chains is lysine, arginine, and histidine; and a group of amino acids having sulfur-containing side chains is cysteine and methionine. Naturally conservative amino acids substitution groups are: valine-leucine, valine-isoleucine, phenylalanine-tyrosine, lysine-arginine, alanine-valine, aspartic acid-glutamic acid, and asparagine-glutamine.

DNA Constructs

Exogenous genetic material may be transferred into a plant by the use of a DNA construct designed for such a purpose by methods that utilize Agrobacterium, particle bombardment or other methods known to those skilled in the art. Design of such a DNA is construct is generally within the skill of the art (Plant Molecular Biology: A Laboratory Manual, eds. Clark, Springer, New York (1997). Examples of such plants in to which exogenous genetic material may be transferred, include, without limitation, alfalfa, Arabidopsis, barley, Brassica, broccoli, cabbage, citrus, cotton, garlic, oat, oilseed rape, onion, canola, flax, maize, an ornamental annual and ornamental perennial plant, pea, peanut, pepper, potato, rice, rye, sorghum, soybean, strawberry, sugarcane, sugar beet, tomato, wheat, poplar, pine, fir, eucalyptus, apple, lettuce, lentils, grape, banana, tea, turf grasses, sunflower, oil palm, Phaseolus, trees, shrubs, vines, etc. It is well known that agronomically important plants comprise genotypes, varieties and cultivars, and that the methods and compositions of the present invention can be tested in these plants by those of ordinary skill in the art of plant molecular biology and plant breeding.

A large number of isolated DNA promoter molecules that are active as a genetic element of a transgene in plant cells have been described. These include the nopaline synthase (P-nos) promoter (Ebert et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 84:5745-5749, 1987), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), the octopine synthase (P-ocs) promoter, which are carried on tumor-inducing plasmids of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, the caulimovirus promoters, such as the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 19S promoter (Lawton et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 9:315-324, 1987), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) and the CaMV 35S promoter (Odell et al., Nature 313:810-812, 1985), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), the figwort mosaic virus 35S promoter (U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,100, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), the light-inducible promoter from the small subunit of ribulose-1,5-bis-phosphate carboxylase (ssRUBISCO), the Adh promoter (Walker et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 84:6624-6628, 1987), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), the sucrose synthase promoter (Yang et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 87:4144-4148, 1990), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), the R gene complex promoter (Chandler et al., Plant Cell 1:1175-1183, 1989, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), and the chlorophyll a/b binding protein gene promoter, etc.

A variety of promoters specifically active in vegetative tissues, such as leaves, stems, roots and tubers, can be used to express the nucleic acid molecules of the present invention. Examples of tuber-specific promoters include, but are not limited to the class I and II patatin promoters (Bevan et al., EMBO J. 8: 1899-1906, 1986); Koster-Topfer et al., Mol Gen Genet. 219: 390-396, 1989); Mignery et al., Gene 62:27-44, 1988); Jefferson et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 14: 995-1006, 1990), herein incorporated by reference in their entireties), the promoter for the potato tuber ADPGPP genes, both the large and small subunits; the sucrose synthase promoter (Salanoubat and Belliard, Gene 60:47-56, 1987), Salanoubat and Belliard, Gene 84:181-185, 1989), herein incorporated by reference in their entirety); and the promoter for the major tuber proteins including the 22 kd protein complexes and proteinase inhibitors (Hannapel, Plant Physiol. 101: 703-704, 1993), herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Examples of leaf-specific promoters include but are not limited to the ribulose biphosphate carboxylase (RbcS or RuBISCO) promoters (see, e.g., Matsuoka et al., Plant J. 6:311-319, 1994), herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); the light harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein gene promoter (see, e.g., Shiina et al., Plant Physiol. 115:477-483, 1997; Casal et al., Plant Physiol. 116:1533-1538, 1998, herein incorporated by reference in their entireties); and the Arabidopsis thaliana myb-related gene promoter (Atmyb5) (Li et al., FEBS Lett. 379:117-121, 1996, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Examples of root-specific promoter include but are not limited to the promoter for the acid chitinase gene (Samac et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 25:587-596, 1994), herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); the root specific subdomains of the CaMV35S promoter that have been identified (Lam et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 86:7890-7894, 1989, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); the ORF13 promoter from Agrobacterium rhizogenes which exhibits high activity in roots (Hansen et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 254:337-343, 1997), herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); the promoter for the tobacco root-specific gene RB7 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,750,386; Yamamoto et al., Plant Cell 3:371-382, 1991, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); and the root cell specific promoters reported by Conkling et al. (Conkling et al., Plant Physiol. 93:1203-1211, 1990, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety), and the POX1 (Pox1, pox1) promoter (Hertig, et al. Plant Mol. Biol. 16:171, 1991).

Another class of useful vegetative tissue-specific promoters are meristematic (root tip and shoot apex) promoters. For example, the “SHOOTMERISTEMLESS” and “SCARECROW” promoters, which are active in the developing shoot or root apical meristems (Di Laurenzio et al., Cell 86:423-433, 1996; Long, Nature 379:66-69, 1996); herein incorporated by reference in their entireties), can be used. Another example of a useful promoter is that which controls the expression of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase HMG2 gene, whose expression is restricted to meristematic and floral (secretory zone of the stigma, mature pollen grains, gynoecium vascular tissue, and fertilized ovules) tissues (see, e.g., Enjuto et al., Plant Cell. 7:517-527, 1995, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Also another example of a useful promoter is that which controls the expression of knl-related genes from maize and other species which show meristem-specific expression (see, e.g., Granger et al, Plant Mol. Biol. 31:373-378, 1996; Kerstetter et al., Plant Cell 6:1877-1887, 1994; Hake et al., Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci. 350:45-51, 1995, herein incorporated by reference in their entireties). Another example of a meristematic promoter is the Arabidopsis thaliana KNAT1 promoter. In the shoot apex, KNAT1 transcript is localized primarily to the shoot apical meristem; the expression of KNAT1 in the shoot meristem decreases during the floral transition and is restricted to the cortex of the inflorescence stem (see, e.g., Lincoln et al., Plant Cell 6:1859-1876, 1994, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety).

Suitable seed-specific and seed enhanced promoters can be derived from the following genes: MAC1 from maize (Sheridan et al., Genetics 142:1009-1020, 1996, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); Cat3 from maize (Genbank No. L05934, Abler et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 22:10131-1038, 1993, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); vivparous-1 from Arabidopsis (Genbank No. U93215); Atimyc1 from Arabidopsis (Urao et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 32:571-57, 1996; Conceicao et al., Plant 5:493-505, 1994, herein incorporated by reference in their entireties); napA from Brassica napus (Genbank No. J02798); the napin gene family from Brassica napus (Sjodahl et al., Planta 197:264-271, 1995, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety).

The ovule-specific promoter for BEL1 gene (Reiser et al. Cell 83:735-742, 1995, Genbank No. U39944; Ray et al, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91:5761-5765, 1994, all of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entireties) can also be used. The egg and central cell specific MEA (FIS1) and FIS2 promoters are also useful reproductive tissue-specific promoters (Luo et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 97:10637-10642, 2000; Vielle-Calzada, et al., Genes Dev. 13:2971-2982, 1999; herein incorporated by reference in their entireties).

A maize pollen-specific promoter has been identified in maize (Guerrero et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 224:161-168, 1990, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Other genes specifically expressed in pollen have been described (see, e.g., Wakeley et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 37:187-192, 1998; Ficker et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 257:132-142, 1998; Kulikauskas et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 34:809-814, 1997; Treacy et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 34:603-611, 1997; all of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entireties).

Promoters derived from genes encoding embryonic storage proteins, which includes the gene encoding the 2S storage protein from Brassica napus (Dasgupta et al, Gene 133:301-302, 1993, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); the 2s seed storage protein gene family from Arabidopsis; the gene encoding oleosin 2010 from Brassica napus (GenBank No. M63985); the genes encoding oleosin A (Genbank No. U09118) and oleosin B (GenBank No. U09119) from soybean; the gene encoding oleosin from Arabidopsis (GenBank No. Z17657); the gene encoding oleosin 18 kD from maize (GenBank No. J05212, Lee, Plant Mol. Biol. 26:1981-1987, 1994), herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); and the gene encoding low molecular weight sulphur rich protein from soybean (Choi et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 246:266-268, 1995, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety), can also be used.

Promoters derived from zein encoding genes (including the 15 kD, 16 kD, 19 kD, 22 kD, 27 kD, and gamma genes; Pedersen et al., Cell 29:1015-1026, 1982, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety) can be also used. The zeins are a group of storage proteins found in maize endosperm.

Other promoters known to function, for example, in maize, include the promoters for the following genes: waxy, Brittle, Shrunken 2, Branching enzymes I and II, starch synthases, debranching enzymes, oleosins, glutelins, and sucrose synthases. A particularly preferred promoter for maize endosperm expression is the promoter for the glutelin gene from rice, more particularly the Osgt-1 promoter (Zheng et al., Mol. Cell Biol. 13:5829-5842, 1993, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Examples of promoters suitable for expression in wheat include those promoters for the ADPglucose pyrophosphorylase (ADPGPP) subunits, the granule bound and other starch synthases, the branching and debranching enzymes, the embryogenesis-abundant proteins, the gliadins, and the glutenins. Examples of such promoters in rice include those promoters for the ADPGPP subunits, the granule bound and other starch synthases, the branching enzymes, the debranching enzymes, sucrose synthases, and the glutelins. A particularly preferred promoter is the promoter for rice glutelin, Osgt-1. Examples of such promoters for barley include those for the ADPGPP subunits, the granule bound and other starch synthases, the branching enzymes, the debranching enzymes, sucrose synthases, the hordeins, the embryo globulins, and the aleurone specific proteins.

A tomato promoter active during fruit ripening, senescence and abscission of leaves and, to a lesser extent, of flowers can be used (Blume et al., Plant J. 12:731-746, 1997, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Other exemplary promoters include the pistol specific promoter in the potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) SK2 gene, encoding a pistil-specific basic endochitinase (Ficker et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 35:425-431, 1997, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety); the Blec4 gene from pea (Pisum sativum cv. Alaska), active in epidermal tissue of vegetative and floral shoot apices of transgenic alfalfa. This makes it a useful tool to target the expression of foreign genes to the epidermal layer of actively growing shoots. The tissue specific E8 promoter from tomato is also useful for directing gene expression in fruits (Deikman, et al., Plant Physiology 100:2013-2017, 1992).

It is further recognized that since in most cases the exact boundaries of regulatory sequences have not been completely defined, DNA fragments of different lengths may have identical promoter activity.

Promoters that are known or are found to cause transcription of DNA in plant cells can be used in the present invention. Such promoters may be obtained from a variety of sources such as plants and plant viruses. In addition to promoters that are known to cause transcription of DNA in plant cells, other promoter molecules may be identified for use in the current invention by screening a plant cDNA library for genes that are selectively or preferably expressed in the target tissues or cells and isolating the 5′ genomic region of the identified cDNAs.

Constructs or vectors may also include with the coding region of interest a polynucleic acid that acts, in whole or in part, to terminate transcription of that region. For example, such sequences have been isolated including the Tr7 3′ sequence and the nos 3′ sequence (Ingelbrecht et al., The Plant Cell 1:671-680, 1989, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference; Bevan et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 11:369-385, 1983, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference).

A vector or construct may also include regulatory elements. Examples of such include the Adh intron 1 (Callis et al., Genes and Develop. 1:1183-1200, 1987, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), the sucrose synthase intron (Vasil et al., Plant Physiol. 91:1575-1579, 1989, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) and the TMV omega element (Gallie et al., Plant Cell 1:301-311, 1989, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference). These and other regulatory elements may be included when appropriate.

A vector or construct may also include a selectable marker. Selectable markers may also be used to select for plants or plant cells that contain the exogenous genetic material. Examples of such include, but are not limited to, a neo gene (Potrykus et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 199:183-188, 1985, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) which codes for kanamycin resistance and can be selected for using kanamycin, G418, etc.; a bar gene that provides for bialaphos resistance; a mutant EPSP synthase gene (Hinchee et al., Bio/Technology 6:915-922 (1988), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) that provide for glyphosate resistance; a nitrilase gene that provides for resistance to bromoxynil (Stalker et al., J. Biol. Chem. 263:6310-6314 (1988), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); a mutant acetolactate synthase gene (ALS) which confers imidazolinone or sulphonylurea; and a methotrexate resistant DHFR gene (Thillet et al., J. Biol. Chem. 263:12500-12508, 1988, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference).

A vector or construct may also include a screenable marker. Screenable markers may be used to monitor expression. Exemplary screenable markers include a β-glucuronidase or uidA gene (GUS) which encodes an enzyme for which various chromogenic substrates are known (Jefferson, Plant Mol. Biol, Rep. 5:387-405 (1987), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference; Jefferson et al., EMBO J. 6:3901-3907 (1987), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); an R-locus gene, which encodes a product that regulates the production of anthocyanin pigments (red color) in plant tissues (Dellaporta et al., Stadler Symposium 11:263-282 (1988), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); a β-lactamase gene (Sutcliffe et al., Proc. Natl. Mad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 75:3737-3741 (1978), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), a gene which encodes an enzyme for which various chromogenic substrates are known (e.g., PADAC, a chromogenic cephalosporin); a luciferase gene (Ow et al., Science 234:856-859 (1986), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); a xylE gene (Zukowsky et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 80:1101-1105 (1983), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) which encodes a catechol dioxygenase that can convert chromogenic catechols; an α-amylase gene (Ikatu et al., Bio/Technol. 8:241-242, 1990, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); a tyrosinase gene (Katz et al., J. Gen. Microbiol. 129:2703-2714, 1983, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) which encodes an enzyme capable of oxidizing tyrosine to DOPA and dopaquinone which in turn condenses to melanin; and an α-galactosidase.

Introduction of Polynucleotides into Plants

There are many methods for introducing transforming nucleic acid molecules into plant cells. Suitable methods are believed to include virtually any method by which nucleic acid molecules may be introduced into a cell, such as by Agrobacterium infection or direct delivery of nucleic acid molecules such as, for example, by PEG-mediated transformation, by electroporation or by acceleration of DNA coated particles, etc. (Potrykus, Ann. Rev. Plant Physiol. Plant Mol. Biol. 42:205-225 (1991), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference; Vasil, Plant Mol. Biol. 25:925-937 (1994), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference). For example, electroporation has been used to transform Zea mays protoplasts (Fromm et al., Nature 312:791-793, 1986, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference).

Other vector systems suitable for introducing transforming DNA into a host plant cell include but are not limited to binary artificial chromosome (BIBAC) vectors (Hamilton et al., Gene 200:107-116, 1997, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), and transfection with RNA viral vectors (Della-Cioppa et al., Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. (1996), 792 pp Engineering Plants for Commercial Products and Applications, pp 57-61, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference.

Technology for introduction of DNA into cells is well known to those of skill in the art. Four general methods for delivering a gene into cells have been described: (1) chemical methods (Graham and van der Eb, Virology 54:536-539, 1973, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); (2) physical methods such as microinjection (Capecchi, Cell 22:479-488 (1980), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference), electroporation (Wong and Neumann, Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 107:584-587 (1982); Fromm et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (U.S.A.) 82:5824-5828 (1985); U.S. Pat. No. 5,384,253, all of which are herein incorporated in their entirety); and the gene gun (Johnston and Tang, Methods Cell Biol. 43:353-365 (1994), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference); (3) viral vectors (Clapp, Clin. Perinatol. 20:155-168, 1993; Lu et al., J. Exp. Med. 178:2089-2096, 1993; Eglitis and Anderson, Biotechniques 6:608-614, 1988, all of which are herein incorporated in their entirety); and (4) receptor-mediated mechanisms (Curiel et al., Hum. Gen. Ther. 3:147-154, 1992, Wagner et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89:6099-6103, 1992, all of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety).

Acceleration methods that may be used include, for example, microprojectile bombardment and the like. One example of a method for delivering transforming nucleic acid molecules to plant cells is microprojectile bombardment. This method has been reviewed by Yang and Christou, eds., Particle Bombardment Technology for Gene Transfer, Oxford Press, Oxford, England (1994), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference. Non-biological particles (microprojectiles) that may be coated with nucleic acids and delivered into cells by a propelling force. Exemplary particles include those comprised of tungsten, gold, platinum, and the like.

Agrobacterium-mediated transfer is a widely applicable system for introducing genes into plant cells because the DNA can be introduced into whole plant tissues, thereby bypassing the need for regeneration of an intact plant from a protoplast. The use of Agrobacterium-mediated plant integrating vectors to introduce DNA into plant cells is well known in the art. See, for example the methods described by Fraley et al., Bio/Technology 3:629-635 (1985) and Rogers et al., Methods Enzymol. 153:253-277 (1987), both of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety. Further, the integration of the Ti-DNA is a relatively precise process resulting in few rearrangements. The region of DNA to be transferred is defined by the border sequences, and intervening DNA is usually inserted into the plant genome as described (Spielmann et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 205:34 (1986), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference).

A transgenic plant resulting from Agrobacterium transformation methods frequently contains a single gene on one chromosome. Such transgenic plants can be referred to as being hemizygous for the added gene. More preferred is a transgenic plant that is homozygous for the added structural gene; i.e., a transgenic plant that contains two added genes, one gene at the same locus on each chromosome of a chromosome pair. A homozygous transgenic plant can be obtained by sexually mating (selfing) an independent segregant transgenic plant that contains a single added gene, germinating some of the seed produced and analyzing the resulting plants produced for the gene of interest.

It is also to be understood that two different transgenic plants can also be mated to produce offspring that contain two independently segregating added, exogenous genes. Selfing of appropriate progeny can produce plants that are homozygous for both added, exogenous genes that encode a polypeptide of interest. Back-crossing to a parental plant and out-crossing with a non-transgenic plant are also contemplated, as is vegetative propagation.

The regeneration, development, and cultivation of plants from single plant protoplast transformants or from various transformed explants is well known in the art (Weissbach and Weissbach, In: Methods for Plant Molecular Biology, (eds.), Academic Press, Inc. San Diego, Calif., (1988), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference). This regeneration and growth process typically includes the steps of selection of transformed cells, culturing those individualized cells through the usual stages of embryonic development through the rooted plantlet stage. Transgenic embryos and seeds are similarly regenerated. The resulting transgenic rooted shoots are thereafter planted in an appropriate plant growth medium such as soil.

The development or regeneration of plants containing the foreign, exogenous gene that encodes a protein of interest is well known in the art. Preferably, the regenerated plants are self-pollinated to provide homozygous transgenic plants. Otherwise, pollen obtained from the regenerated plants is crossed to seed-grown plants of agronomically important lines. Conversely, pollen from plants of these important lines is used to pollinate regenerated plants. A transgenic plant of the present invention containing a desired polypeptide is cultivated using methods well known to one skilled in the art.

The present invention also provides for parts of the plants of the present invention. Plant parts, without limitation, include seed, endosperm, ovule and pollen. In a particularly preferred embodiment of the present invention, the plant part is a seed.

Methods for transforming dicots, primarily by use of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, and obtaining transgenic plants have been published, e.g., cotton (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,004,863, 5,159,135, 5,518,908, all of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety), soybean (U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,834, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference) and Brassica (U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,174, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference).

Transformation of monocotyledons using electroporation, particle bombardment, and Agrobacterium have also been reported. For example, transformation and plant regeneration have been achieved in asparagus, barley, Zea mays (Fromm et al., Bio/Technology 8:833 (1990), Armstrong et al., Crop Science 35:550-557 (1995), all of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety); oat; rice, rye, sugarcane; tall fescue and wheat (U.S. Pat. No. 5,631,152, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference.)

In addition to the above discussed procedures, practitioners are familiar with the standard resource materials which describe specific conditions and procedures for the construction, manipulation and isolation of macromolecules (e.g., DNA molecules, plasmids, etc.), generation of recombinant organisms and the screening and isolating of clones, (see for example, Sambrook et al., Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Spring Harbor Press (1989); Mailga et al., Methods in Plant Molecular Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Press (1995), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference; Birren et al., Genome Analysis: Detecting Genes, 1, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. (1998), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference; Birren et al., Genome Analysis: Analyzing DNA, 2, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. (1998), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference; Plant Molecular Biology: A Laboratory Manual, eds. Clark, Springer, New York (1997), the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference).

Having now generally described the invention, the same will be more readily understood through reference to the following examples, which are provided by way of illustration, and are not intended to be limiting of the present invention, unless specified.

EXAMPLES Example 1

When an isolated native plant polynucleotide comprising a coding sequence is reconstructed as a transgene, then introduced into the plant by methods of plant transformation there is a risk that expression from the endogenous homologous plant gene will interact negatively with the transgene. To avoid these negative interactions it may be necessary to provide a transgene polynucleotide substantially divergent in sequence from the native plant gene. An artificial polynucleotide molecule can be produced by the method of the present invention and used to reduce the occurrence of transgene silencing.

This example serves to illustrate methods of the present invention that result in the production of a polynucleotide encoding a modified plant EPSP synthase. The native rice (Oryzae sativa) EPSPS enzyme and chloroplast transit peptide is used to construct an artificial polynucleotide molecule that also includes codons that encode for substituted amino acids that do not naturally occur in the rice EPSPS enzyme. These substituted amino acids provide for a glyphosate resistant rice EPSPS enzyme (OsEPSPS_TIPS, SEQ ID NO:1).

The steps described in Table 6 are used to construct such an artificial polynucleotide sequence (OsEPSPS_AT, SEQ ID NO:3) using an Arabidopsis codon usage table and the parameters for construction of a substantially divergent polynucleotide molecule, which when expressed in plants encodes a modified rice EPSPS enzyme resistant to glyphosate herbicide. The comparison of the native rice EPSPS gene sequence referred to as OsEPSPS_Nat (SEQ ID NO:2) that has previously been modified to encode a glyphosate resistant enzyme to the polynucleotide molecule modified for Arabidopsis codon usage, OsEPSPS_AT (SEQ ID NO: 3) and to the sequence modified for Zea mays codon usage, OsEPSPS_ZM (SEQ ID NO: 4) by this method is shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 shows nucleotide bases changed in the modified polynucleotides compared to OsEPSPS_Nat, SEQ ID NO: 2.

TABLE 6 Polynucleotide design for a modified rice EPSP synthase (OsEPSPS_AT) 1. Substitute amino acids at positions 173 and 177 to provide a modified rice EPSPS enzyme resistant to glyphosate herbicide shown in SEQ ID NO: 1. 2. Back translate SEQ ID NO: 1 to generate an artificial polynucleotide sequence using the Arabidopsis thaliana codon usage table (Table 2). 3. Perform sequence alignment with native OsEPSPS polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO: 2) and the artificial polynucleotide sequence to determine degree of sequence identity, map open reading frames, select patterns to search and identify restriction enzymes recognition sequences. 4. Make corrections to the codons used in the artificial polynucleotide sequence to achieve desired percentage of sequence identity and to avoid clustering of identical codons. This is especially important for amino acids that are occur at high frequency, i.e., alanine, glycine, histidine, leucine, serine, and valine. Approximate distribution of codon usage in the polynucleotide sequence according to the Arabidopsis codon usage, Table 2. 5. The polynucleotide sequence is inspected for local regions that have a GC:AT ratio higher than about 2 over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides. The polynucleotide sequence is adjusted as necessary, by substituting codons in these regions such that the local GC:AT ratio is less than about 2 and the entire polynucleotide composition is in the range of 0.9-1.3. 6. Introduce stop codons to translation frames “b”, “c”, “d”, “e” and “f”. Translation stop codons are created in the “b”, “c”, “d”, “e” and “f” translational frames by replacing one or more codons within about 130 base pairs (bps) of the ends of the artificial polynucleotide that creates a stop codon without changing the amino acid coding sequence of frame one. 7. Eliminate ATG codons from forward (frames “b” and “c”) and reverse open reading frames (frame “d”, “e”, “f”). The forward and reverse reading frames are inspected for the presence of ATG codons. Any ATG codons in frame “b” and “c” found in the polynucleotide sequence before third Met in frame “a” of the polynucleotide are eliminated by replacing one or more codons that overlap the ATG changing one of the nucleotides without changing the amino acid coding sequence of frame “a”. In the reverse frames, replacement of ATG or stop codon introduction may be done to interrupt potential reading frames. 8. Eliminate unwanted restriction enzyme recognition patterns and other specific patterns (polyadenylation, RNA splicing, sequence instability patterns). The polynucleotide sequence is inspected for the presence of any unwanted polynucleotide patterns and the patterns are disrupted by substituting codons in these regions. 9. Check sequence identity between a first polynucleotide and the artificial polynucleotide created by the method of the present invention. Eliminate sequence identity in a contiguous polynucleotide that is longer than 23 bps. It is desirable to eliminate sequence identity greater than about 15 bps. It is helpful to select from amino acids such as, serine, arginine, and leucine that have 6 codons or from amino acids with 4 codons to eliminate sequence identity. 10. Review the artificial polynucleotide sequence resulting from anyone of steps 1 to 9 for any of the sequence features identified in steps 4-9, and if the sequence does not comply with conditions make additional codon substitutions to the sequence until the conditions of steps 4-9 are met. 11. Construct the artificial polynucleotide molecule by methods known in the art, e.g., using PCR with a mixture of overlapping primers. The primers at the ends of the gene may contain convenient restriction sites to allow easy cloning of the gene to selected vector. At the 5′ end usually AlfIII, BspHI, NcoI, NdeI, PciI, or SphI are most convenient in as much as their sequence contains an ATG start codon, however other enzymes can be used as well if a modified polynucleotide is designed to create a fusion with another polynucleotide segment, e.g., chloroplast transit peptide and EPSPS coding sequence. 12. Perform a DNA sequence analysis of the artificial polynucleotide to confirm the synthetic construction resulted in the desired polynucleotide molecule. If errors are found, then eliminate these by site directed mutagenesis for which many methods are known to those skilled in the art of DNA mutagenesis.

A Zea mays codon usage (Zea mays, Table 3) version of the glyphosate resistant rice EPSPS enzyme sequence (Oryzae sativa EPSPS enzyme with TIPS mutations, SEQ ID NO:1) is made. The polynucleotide that encodes this enzyme includes codons that encode for substituted amino acids that do not naturally occur in the native rice EPSPS enzyme. These substituted amino acids provide for a glyphosate resistant rice EPSPS enzyme. The steps described in Table 7 are used to construct a modified artificial polynucleotide sequence (OsEPSPS_ZM, SEQ ID NO:4) based on a Zea mays codon usage table that encodes a modified rice EPSPS enzyme resistant to glyphosate herbicide. The comparison of the OsEPSPS_Nat polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO:2) to the OsEPSPS_ZM artificial polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO:4) using the Zea mays codon usage is shown in FIG. 2.

TABLE 7 Polynucleotide construction for modified rice EPSP synthase (OsEPSPS_ZM) 1. Back translate SEQ ID NO: 1 to generate an artificial poly- nucleotide sequence using the Zea mays codon usage table (Table 3). 2. Perform sequence alignment with the native OsEPSPS poly- nucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO: 2) and the artificial poly- nucleotide sequence to determine degree of sequence identity, map open reading frames, select patterns to search and identify restriction enzymes recognition sequences. 3. Make corrections to the codons used in the artificial poly- nucleotide sequence to achieve desired percentage of sequence identity and to avoid clustering of identical codons. This is especially important for amino acids that are occur at high frequency, i.e., alanine, glycine, histidine, leucine, serine, and valine. Approximate distribution of codon usage in the polynucleotide sequence according to the Zea mays codon usage, Table 3. 4. The polynucleotide sequence is inspected for local regions that have a GC:AT ratio higher than about 2 over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides. The polynucleotide sequence is adjusted as necessary, by substituting codons in these regions such that the local GC:AT ratio is less than about 2 and the entire polynucleotide composition is in the range of 1.2-1.7. 5. Follow steps 6-12 of Table 6.

TABLE 8 Sequence percent identity between OsEPSPS polynucleotides. OsEPSPS_ZM OsEPSPS_AT OsEPSPS_Nat OsEPSPS_ZM 100.00 73.51 71.58 OsEPSPS_AT 100.00 74.03 OsEPSPS_Nat 100.00

TABLE 9 The nucleotide composition and GC:AT ratio of the modified polynucleotide sequences for the rice EPSPS gene sequence. A C G T GC:AT OsEPSPS_AT 377 336 444 391 1.02 OsEPSPS_ZM 365 381 470 332 1.22

The two rice EPSPS artificial polynucleotide sequences (SEQ ID NO:3 and SEQ ID NO:4) are modified such that the percent identity is below 75 percent compared to SEQ ID NO:2 or relative to each other (Table 8). The nucleotide composition and GC:AT ratio of the polynucleotide sequences for the rice EPSPS gene sequence are shown in Table 9. These polynucleotides can be selected for use in plant expression constructs together with different regulatory elements or they can be combined in a single plant by retransformation with a DNA construct or by methods of plant breeding. Concerns with gene silencing and recombination are reduced when DNA constructs have reduced levels of homologous DNA.

Example 2

Corn (Zea mays) has been genetically modified to have resistance to glyphosate herbicide (U.S. Pat. No. 6,040,497). These corn plants contain a transgene with a corn EPSP synthase modified for glyphosate tolerance. The methods of the present invention can be used to construct a new artificial polynucleotide encoding a corn EPSP synthase that is substantially different in percent identity to the endogenous corn EPSP synthase gene. The newly constructed corn EPSP synthase artificial polynucleotide can be used as a selectable marker during the selection of transgenic plant lines that may contain additional transgenic agronomic traits. During hybrid corn seed production, it is useful to have both parents glyphosate tolerant using non-interfering transgenes.

TABLE 10 Polynucleotide construction for modified corn EPSP synthase (ZmEPSPS_ZM, SEQ ID NO: 10) 1. Back translate SEQ ID NO: 8 to generate a polynucleotide sequence using the Zea mays codon usage table (Table 3). 2. Perform sequence alignment with ZmEPSPS_Nat polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO: 9) and the artificial polynucleotide sequence to determine degree of sequence identity, map open reading frames, select patterns to search and identify restriction enzymes recognition sequences. 3. Make corrections to the codons used in the artificial polynucleotide sequence to achieve desired percentage of sequence identity and to avoid clustering of identical codons. This is especially important for amino acids that are occur at high frequency, i.e., alanine, glycine, histidine, leucine, serine, and valine. Approximate distribution of codon usage in the polynucleotide sequence according to the Zea mays codon usage, Table 3. 4. The artificial polynucleotide sequence is inspected for local regions that have a GC:AT ratio higher than about 2 over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides. The polynucleotide sequence is adjusted as necessary, by substituting codons in these regions such that the local GC:AT ratio is less than about 2 and the entire polynucleotide composition is in the range of 1.2-1.7. 5. Follow steps 6-12 of Table 6.

TABLE 11 Sequence percent identity between ZmEPSPS polynucleotides. ZmEPSPS_ZM ZmEPSPS_Nat ZmEPSPS_ZM 100.00 74.81 ZmEPSPS_Nat 100.00

Maize EPSPS gene nucleotide sequence is also modified to reduce identity between synthetic and native gene and maintain overall GC:AT ratio typical for monocots. The GC:AT ratio for the ZmEPSPS_ZM sequence is 1.38. The sequence identity is reduced to about 75% between native (ZmEPSPS_Nat, SEQ ID NO:9) and synthetic (ZmEPSPS_ZM, SEQ ID NO:10).

The comparison of native polynucleotides encoding EPSPS indicate that the chloroplast transit peptide is the most divergent fragment of the gene. Similarity in nucleotide sequence of mature peptides is higher than 88% for maize and rice enzymes, and some conserved regions have sequence identity as long as 50 bps. Posttranscriptional gene silencing has been observed for sequences as small as 60 polynucleotides (Sijen et al., Plant Cell, 8:2277-2294, 1996; Mains, Plant Mol. Biol. 43:261-273, 2000).

Example 3

Soybean (Glycine max) has been genetically modified to be tolerant to glyphosate by expression of a class II EPSPS isolated from Agrobacterium (Padgette et al. Crop Sci. 35:1451-1461, 1995). A soybean native EPSPS gene sequence has been identified and an artificial polynucleotide sequence designed using the method of the present invention. The artificial polynucleotide encodes a protein sequence that is modified to produce a glyphosate resistant EPSPS enzyme (GmEPSPS_IKS, SEQ ID NO:5) by replacing amino acids T to I, R to K and P to S within the GNAGTAMRP motif, resulting in a modified soybean EPSPS enzyme with the motif GNAGIAMKS (SEQ ID NO:34), also referred to as IKS mutant. Expression of a modified to EPSPS enzyme in the cells of a plant by transformation with a transgene plant expression cassette, which contains a polynucleotide encoding the modified EPSPS with the motif GNAGIAMKS will confer glyphosate tolerance to the plants. Additional amino acid substitutions for the arginine (R) in the motif can also include asparagine (N).

TABLE 12 Polynucleotide construction for modified soybean EPSP synthase gene (GmEPSPS_GM, SEQ ID NO: 7). 1. Back translate SEQ ID NO: 5 to generate an artificial polynucleotide sequence using the Glycine max codon usage table (Table 4). 2. Perform sequence alignment with GmEPSPS_Nat polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO: 6) and the artificial polynucleotide sequence to determine degree of sequence identity, map open reading frames, select patterns to search and identify restriction enzymes recognition sequences. 3. Make corrections to the codons used in the artificial polynucleotide sequence to achieve desired percentage of sequence identity and to avoid clustering of identical codons. This is especially important for amino acids that are occur at high frequency, i.e., alanine, glycine, histidine, leucine, serine, and valine. Approximate distribution of codon usage in the polynucleotide sequence according to the Glycine max codon usage, Table 4. 4. The polynucleotide sequence is inspected for local regions that have a GC:AT ratio higher than about 2 over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides. The polynucleotide sequence is adjusted as necessary, by substituting codons in these regions such that the local GC:AT ratio is less than about 2 and the entire polynucleotide composition is in the range of 0.9-1.3. 5. Follow steps 6-12 of Table 6.

TABLE 13 Comparison of the sequence percent identity of the modified GmEPSPS at polynucleotide sequence level. GmEPSPS_GM GmEPSPS_Nat GmEPSPS_GM 100.00 72.43 GmEPSPS_Nat 100.00

The soybean native EPSPS gene is modified using a soybean codon table (Table 4) and the conditions of the method of the present invention. The relative ratio of GC:AT is not changed in the modified gene, however the sequence identity between the two is reduced to 72%.

Example 4

The native aroA polynucleotide gene isolated from Agrobacterium strain CP4 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,435, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety) that encodes a glyphosate resistant EPSP synthase (SEQ ID NO:15) can be modified by the method of the present invention to provide a polynucleotide that has the codon usage of Arabidopsis, Zea mays, or Glycine max. For the appropriate expression of CP4EPSPS to confer glyphosate tolerance in plants, a chloroplast transit peptide is necessarily fused to the CP4EPSPS coding sequence to target accumulation of the enzyme to the chloroplasts. The CTP2 chloroplast transit peptide is commonly used for the expression of this gene in transgenic plants (Nida et al., J. Agric, Food Chem. 44:1960-1966, 1996). The sequence of CP4EPSPS together with CTP2 polynucleotide (SEQ ID NO:11) have been modified by the method of the present invention. Other chloroplast transit peptides known in the art can be fused to the CP4EPSPS to direct the enzyme to the chloroplasts.

TABLE 14 Polynucleotide construction for aroA:CP4 EPSP synthase coding sequence (CP4EPSPS_AT, CP4EPSPS_ZM, or CP4EPSPS_GM) 1. Place CTP2 transit peptide sequence (SEQ ID NO: 11) in front of CP4EPSPS (SEQ ID NO: 15) as a fusion polypeptide. Back translate the fusion polypeptide to produce an artificial polynucleotide sequence using the Arabidopsis thaliana codon usage table (Table 2), or the Zea mays codon usage table (Table 3), or the Glycine max codon usage table (Table 4). 2. Perform sequence alignment with native CTP2 (SEQ ID NO: 12) and native CP4EPSPS polynucleotide sequence(SEQ ID NO: 16) and the artificial polynucleotide sequence to determine degree of sequence identity, map open reading frames, select patterns to search and identify restriction enzymes recognition sequences. 3. Make corrections to the codons used in the artificial poly- nucleotide sequence to achieve desired percentage of sequence identity and to avoid clustering of identical codons. This is especially important for amino acids that are occur at high frequency, i.e., alanine, glycine, histidine, leucine, serine, and valine. Approximate distribution of codon usage in the polynucleotide sequence according to the Arabidopsis thaliana codon usage, Table 2, or the Zea mays codon usage table (Table 3) depending on the table in use. 4. The artificial polynucleotide sequence is inspected for local regions that have a GC:AT ratio higher than about 2 over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides. The polynucleotide sequence is adjusted as necessary, by substituting codons in these regions such that the local GC:AT ratio is less than about 2 and the entire polynucleotide composition is in the range of 0.9-1.3 is Table 2 is used and 1.2-1.7 if Table 3 is used. 5. Follow steps 6-12 of Table 6.

TABLE 15 Comparison of the sequence percent identity of the artificial CP4EPSPS polynucleotides. CTP2CP_GM CTP2CP4_AT CTP2CP4_ZM CTP2CP4_Syn CTP2CP4_NAT CTP2CP4_GM 100.00 75.66 74.12 75.15 74.37 CTP2CP4_AT 100.00 76.13 74.56* 72.93 CTP2CP4_ZM 100.00 77.76* 82.58 CTP2CP4_Syn 100.00 82.70 CTP2CP4_NAT 100.00 *Percent of identity relates to the CP4EPSPS and do not include transit peptide.

TABLE 16 The nucleotide composition and GC:AT ratio of the artificial polynucleotide sequences for the CP4EPSPS gene sequence. A C G T GC:AT CTP2CP4_GM 382 375 442 397 1.05 CTP2CP4_AT 369 408 469 350 1.22 CTP2CP4_ZM 312 487 577 290 1.65

The polynucleotide sequence CTP2_Nat (SEQ ID NO:12) plus CP4EPSPS_Nat (SEQ ID NO:16) designated as CTP2CP4_Nat is compared in Table 15 to the artificial polynucleotide sequences designated as CTP2CP4_AT (CTP2_AT, SEQ ID NO:13 fused to CP4EPSPS_AT, SEQ ID NO:17) and CTP2CP4_ZM (CTP2_AT, SEQ ID NO:14 fused to CP4EPSPS_ZM, SEQ ID NO:18) produced by the method of the present invention. The polynucleotide sequence that is the most divergent from the native sequence CTP2CP4_NAT and CTP2CP4EPSPS_Syn is CTP2CP4_AT having about 73% and 75% sequence identity, respectively. The CTP2CP4_ZM polynucleotide sequence compared to CTP2CP4_Nat and CP4EPSPS_Syn has about 83% and 78% identity to these two sequences, respectively.

A primary criteria for the selection of transgenes to combine in a plant is the percent identity. Table 15 can be used to select a CP4EPSPS polynucleotide molecule for plant expression cassette construction when it is known that the recipient plant will contain more than one CP4EPSPS polynucleotide. The GC:AT ratio in native CP4EPSPS is about 1.7. The artificial version with the Zea mays codon bias is produced to have a very similar GC:AT ratio. In the Arabidopsis codon version, the GC:AT ratio is decreased to about 1.2.

Gene expression is also a criteria for selection of transgenes to be expressed. Expression of a transgene can vary in different crop plants, therefore having several artificial polynucleotide coding sequence available for testing in different crop plants and genotypes, varieties or cultivars is an advantage and an aspect of the invention.

Example 5

The bar polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO:20) encoding a phosphinothricin acetyl transferase protein (SEQ ID NO:19) has been used to genetically modify plants for resistance to glufosinate herbicide. Two new bar polynucleotide sequences have been designed using the method of the present invention. The alignment of BAR1_Nat with the two new artificial BAR1 polynucleotides is shown in FIG. 4.

TABLE 17 Polynucleotide gene construction for BAR1_AT (SEQ ID NO: 21) and BAR1_ZM (SEQ ID NO: 22) 1. Back translate SEQ ID NO: 19 to generate a polynucleotide sequence using the Arabidopsis thaliana codon usage table (Table 2) or the Zea mays codon usage table (Table 3) 2. Perform sequence alignment with native BAR1_Nat polynucleotide sequence (SEQ ID NO: 20) and the artificial polynucleotide sequence to determine degree of sequence identity, map open reading frames, select patterns to search and identify restriction enzymes recognition sequences. 3. Make corrections to the codons used in the artificial polynucleotide sequence to achieve desired percentage of sequence identity and to avoid clustering of identical codons. This is especially important for amino acids that are occur at high frequency, i.e., alanine, glycine, histidine, leucine, serine, and valine. Approximate distribution of codon usage in the polynucleotide sequence according to the Arabidopsis thaliana codon usage, Table 2, or the Zea mays codon usage table (Table 3) depending on the table in use. 4. The artificial polynucleotide sequence is inspected for local regions that have a GC:AT ratio higher than about 2 over a range of about 50 contiguous nucleotides. The polynucleotide sequence is adjusted as necessary, by substituting codons in these regions such that the local GC:AT ratio is less than about 2 and the entire polynucleotide composition is in the range of 0.9-1.3 if Table 2 is used and 1.2-1.7 if Table 3 is used. 5. Follow steps 6-12 of Table 6.

The sequence identity of artificial BAR polynucleotides is the range of 73-77% (Table 18). The native polynucleotide is highly GC rich. The artificial version (BAR1_ZM) with Zea mays codon bias has reduced the GC:AT ratio to about 1.3 and artificial version (BAR1_AT) with Arabidopsis codon bias the ratio is about 1.0 (Table 19).

TABLE 18 Sequence percent identity between bar genes at the polynucleotide sequence level. BAR1_ZM BAR1_AT BAR1_Nat BAR1_ZM 100.00 77.35 76.99 BAR1_AT 100.00 73.73 BAR1_Nat 100.00

TABLE 19 The nucleotide composition and GC:AT ratio of the artificial polynucleotide sequences for the bar gene sequence. BAR_AT 139 130 144 139 1.01 BAR_ZM 122 156 154 120 1.28

Example 6

This example serves to illustrate DNA constructs for the expression of the artificial polynucleotides of the present invention in plants. A transgene DNA plant expression cassette comprises regulatory elements that control the transcription of a mRNA from the cassette. A plant expression cassette is constructed to include a promoter that functions in plants that is operably linked to a 5′ leader region that is operably linked to a DNA sequence of interest operably linked to a 3′ termination region. These cassettes are constructed in plasmid vectors, which can then be transferred into plants by Agrobacterium mediated transformation methods or other methods known to those skilled in the art of plant transformation. The following plasmid vector constructs are illustrated to provide examples of plasmids containing plant expression cassettes comprising the artificial polynucleotide molecules of the present invention and are not limited to these examples.

The artificial polynucleotide molecules of the present invention, for example, CP4EPSPS_AT and CP4EPSPS_ZM are synthesized using overlapping primers. The full length product is then amplified with gene specific primers containing overhangs with SphI (forward primer) and EcoRI (reverse primer). Genes are cloned into the vector pCRII-TOPO (Invitrogen, CA). The resulting plasmids pMON54949 (CP4EPSPS_AT, FIG. 6) and pMON54950 (CP4EPSPS_ZM, FIG. 7) contain the artificial polynucleotide and these polynucleotides are sequenced using DNA sequencing methods to confirm that the modifications designed by the method of the present invention are contained in the artificial polynucleotides. In the next step, the artificial polynucleotide encoding the CTP2 chloroplast transit peptide is ligated to the 5′ end of the CP4EPSPS polynucleotides. The CaMV 35S promoter with a duplicated enhancer (P-CaMVe35S) and a rice actin 1 intron (I-OsAct1) derived from pMON30151 (FIG. 8) by digestion with SphI and HindIII ligated to the CTP2CP4EPSPS polynucleotides to create plasmids pMON59302 (CTP2CP4EPSPS_AT, FIG. 9) and pMON59307 (CTP2CP4EPSPS_ZM, FIG. 10).

For the expression of the new artificial polynucleotides in monocot plants, genes are placed in plant expression cassettes containing at the 5′ end of the polynucleotide, a promoter and an intron, a 5′ untranslated region, and at the 3′ end of the polynucleotide a transcription termination signal. For this purpose, pMON42411 (FIG. 11) containing P-CaMV35S:en, I-HSP70, CTP2CP4_Nat and NOS 3′ are digested with NcoI and EcoRI restriction enzymes. The pMON59302 (FIG. 9) and pMON59307 (FIG. 10) are digested with same restriction enzymes. Fragments are gel purified using Qiagen gel purification kit and ligated to form pMON58400 (CP4EPSPS_AT, FIG. 12) and pMON58401 (CP4EPSPS_ZM, FIG. 13). Additional vector pMON54964 (FIG. 14), containing P-OsAct1/I-OsAct1 is made by replacing P-e35S/I-Hsp70 from pMON58400 (FIG. 12) using HindIII/NcoI fragment from pMON25455 (FIG. 15). To create a monocot expression vector containing the P-FMV promoter, pMON30152 (FIG. 16) is digested with NheI, the ends are blunted with T4DNA polymerase in the presence of 4 dNTP-s (200 μM) and NcoI. The CPT2CP4_AT or CTP2CP4_ZM DNA fragments are isolated from pMON59302 (FIG. 9) or pMON59307 (FIG. 10), respectively by digesting with EcoRI, blunting with T4 DNA polymerase and NcoI digest. Gel purified DNA fragments are ligated and new plasmids pMON54992 (CTP2CP4_AT, FIG. 17) and pMON54985 (CTP2CP4_ZM, FIG. 18) are created. In each case the successful plasmid construction is confirmed by restriction endonuclease digestion, using among others ClaI (introduced to both artificial polynucleotides) and Pst I (introduced to CP4EPSPS_ZM). The CP4EPSPS_Nat present in parental vectors has both ClaI and two PstI restriction sites in coding region in different location than in artificial polynucleotides.

For the expression of the artificial CP4EPSPS polynucleotides in dicot plants, two parental vectors are used: pMON20999 (P-FMV/CTP2CP4_Syn/3′E-9, FIG. 19) and pMON45313 (P-e35S/CTP2CP4_Syn/3′E9, FIG. 20). In each plasmid, a DNA fragment containing the CTP2CP4_Syn polynucleotide is replaced with CTP2CP4_AT or CTP2CP4_ZM. To create pMON59308 (P-CaMVe35S/CTP2CP4_AT, FIG. 21) or pMON59309 (P-CaMVe35S/CTP2CP4_ZM, FIG. 22), pMON45313 is digested with NcoI and EcoRI and the DNA restriction fragments derived from NcoI/EcoRI digest of pMON59302 (CTP2CP4_AT, FIG. 9) or pMON59307 (CTP2CP4_ZM, FIG. 10) are ligated, respectively. To create pMON59313 (P-FMV/CTP2CP4_AT/3′E9, FIG. 23) and pMON59396 (P-FMV/CTP2CP4_ZM/3′E9, FIG. 24) parental plasmid pMON20999 is digested with NcoI and BamHI to remove CTP2CP4_Syn and the restriction fragments NcoI/BamHI derived from pMON59308 (CTP2CP4_AT, FIG. 21) or pMON59309 (CTP2CP4_ZM, FIG. 22) are ligated, respectively.

Example 7

The artificial polynucleotides are tested to determine efficacy for conferring glyphosate tolerance to transgenic plants. Five different expression cassettes (Table 20) with the new artificial CP4EPSPS polynucleotides are transformed into corn and the resulting transgenic corn plants compared to the commercial standard (Roundup Ready® Corn 603, Monsanto Co.). The plasmid pMON25496 (FIG. 25) contained in the commercial standard has two copies of the CP4EPSPS_Nat polynucleotide, the expression driven by the P-CaMVe35S (P-CaMVe35S) and P-OsAct1 promoters, respectively. The plasmids containing the new artificial CP4EPSPS polynucleotides contain only a single copy of the polynucleotide to be tested. The expression of these polynucleotides are driven by the P-CaMVe35S promoter with the heat shock protein intron I-Hsp70 or the P-FMV promoter with a rice sucrose synthase intron (I-OsSS). Plasmid pMON54964 contains rice actin 1 promoter with first native intron (U.S. Pat. No. 5,641,876, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety).

These plasmids are transformed into corn cells by an Agrobacterium mediated method and transgenic corn lines regenerated on glyphosate selection. Transgenic corn plants can be produced by an Agrobacterium mediated transformation method. A disarmed Agrobacterium strain C58 (ABI) harboring a binary construct of the present invention is used. This is transferred into Agrobacterium by a triparental mating method (Ditta et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 77:7347-7351). Liquid cultures of Agrobacterium are initiated from glycerol stocks or from a freshly streaked plate and grown overnight at 26° C.-28° C. with shaking (approximately 150 rpm) to mid-log growth phase in liquid LB medium, pH 7.0 containing the appropriate antibiotics. The Agrobacterium cells are resuspended in the inoculation medium (liquid CM4C) and the density is adjusted to OD₆₆₀ of 1. Freshly isolated Type II immature HiII×LH198 and HiII corn embryos are inoculated with Agrobacterium containing a construct and co-cultured several days in the dark at 23° C. The embryos are then transferred to delay media and incubated at 28° C. for several or more days. All subsequent cultures are kept at this temperature. The embryos are transferred to a first selection medium containing carbenicillin 500/0.5 mM glyphosate). Two weeks later, surviving tissue are transferred to a second selection medium containing carbenicillin 500/1.0 mM glyphosate). Subculture surviving callus every 2 weeks until events can be identified. This may take about 3 subcultures on 1.0 mM glyphosate. Once events are identified, bulk up the tissue to regenerate. The plantlets are transferred to MSOD media in culture vessel and kept for two weeks. Then the plants with roots are transferred into soil. Those skilled in the art of corn transformation can modify this method to provide substantially identical transgenic corn plants containing the DNA compositions of the present invention.

About 30 transgenic corn lines for each plasmid construct are tested, and the transformation efficiency and expression levels of the CP4EPSPS enzyme are shown in Table 20. The transgenic corn lines are treated with glyphosate at a rate of 64 oz/acre as young plants, the surviving plants are assayed by CP4EPSPS ELISA (Padgette et al. Crop Sci. 35:1451-1461, 1995) to determine the CP4 EPSPS protein expression levels (CP4 exp %) shown in Table 20, and the level of expression is compared to the commercially available standard glyphosate tolerant corn plant (Roundup Ready® corn 603, Monsanto Co., St. Louis, Mo.) as a percent of the amount of protein expression determined in the commercial standard. Generally, more than 50% of corn lines survive the spray with 64 oz/acre glyphosate. The surviving plants are shown to have high level of CP4EPSPS expression that ranges from about 75 to 86% of commercial standard 603.

TABLE 20 Transformation efficiency (TE), CP4 expression (average %) derived from transformation of different CP4-alt constructs. pMON Promoter/Intron # TE (%) CP4 exp (%)* 58400 (CP4_AT) P-CaMVe35S/IHsp70 5.4 75.5 58401 (CP4_ZM) P-CaMVe35S/IHsp70 7.2 84.7 54964 (CP4_AT) P-OsAct1 8.2 78.1 54985 (CP4_ZM) P-FMV/IOsSS 11.5 85.7 54992 (CP4_AT) P-FMV/IOsSS 11.5 78.2 nk603 (control) P-OsAct1/P-e35S: — 100 *CP4EPSPS expression is calculated as percent of control (603) done on plants that survived glyphosate spray (64 oz/acre).

Example 8

Three plasmid constructs are evaluated in transgenic cotton plants (Table 21). The control construct (pMON20999) contains P-FMV/CP4EPSPS_Syn this expression cassette is contained in the commercially available glyphosate tolerant cotton line 1445 (Roundup Ready® cotton, Monsanto Co., St. Louis, Mo.). The plasmid constructs, pMON59313 and pMON59396 containing the CP4EPSPS_AT and CP4EPSPS_ZM polynucleotides, respectively, are assayed for transformation efficiency and CP4EPSPS enzyme levels relative to the commercial glyphosate tolerant expression cassette. About fifty transgenic cotton lines are evaluated for each construct. The artificial CP4EPSPS_AT polynucleotide driven by the P-FMV promoter gives a higher percentage of plants with a single insert, and an increase in expression level of the CP4EPSPS enzyme relative to the pMON20999 expression cassette as measured by ELISA.

TABLE 21 Transformation efficiency (TE), average CP4EPSPS expression in R0 cotton lines derived from transformation of different CP4EPSPS constructs. pMON Promoter TE (%) CP4 Exp (%) 20999 (CP4EPSPS_Syn) P-FMV 15.0 100.0 59313 (CP4EPSPS_AT) P-FMV 15.0 116.4 59396 (CP4EPSPS_ZM) P-FMV 16.1 52.0

Example 9

Constructs containing the artificial CP4EPSPS polynucleotides, CP4EPSPS_AT and CP4EPSPS_ZM are evaluated in soybean (Table 22). The plasmid constructs all contain the P-FMV promoter to drive expression of the new CP4EPSPS polynucleotides and are compared to the P-FMV/CP4EPSPS_Syn contained in pMON20999. About 25 to 30 transgenic soybean plants are produced for each construct. The transformation efficiency and CP4EPSPS enzyme, levels are measured. A surprisingly high expression level of CP4EPSPS protein is measured in soybean plants containing the CP4EPSPS_ZM coding sequence (Table 22).

TABLE 22 Transformation efficiency (TE), average CP4 expression derived from transformation of different CP4EPSPS constructs. pMON Promoter TE (%) CP4Exp (%) 20999 (CP4_Syn) P-FMV 0.55 100.0 59313 (CP4_AT) P-FMV 0.40 66.6 54996 (CP4_ZM) P-FMV 0.29 242.5

Example 10

Tobacco cells are transformed with three plasmid constructs containing different CP4EPSPS polynucleotide sequences and regenerated into plants. About twenty transgenic lines are evaluated from each construct. Expression from each of the CP4EPSPS polynucleotides is driven by the P-CaMVe35S duplicated enhancer promoter (Table 23). The transformation efficiency and CP4EPSPS enzyme expression level is measured. The different CP4EPSPS polynucleotide constructs are shown to perform about the same in transgenic tobacco for transformation efficiency and expression.

TABLE 23 Transformation efficiency (TE), average CP4 expression in R0 tobacco lines derived from transformation of different CP4 EPSPS constructs. pMON Promoter TE (%) CP4 exp. (%) 59308 CP4EPSPS_AT P-CaMVe35S 35 100.0 59309 CP4EPSPS_ZM P-CaMVe35S 35 91.0 54313 CP4EPSPS_Syn P-CaMVe35S 35 100.0

Example 11

Arabidopsis thaliana is transformed with four plasmid constructs by vacuum infiltration (Bechtold N, et al., CR Acad Sci Paris Sciences di la vie/life sciences 316: 1194-1199, (1993) and V1 progeny evaluated to compare efficacy of the different CP4EPSPS polynucleotide sequences and different promoters for the use in selection of plants on glyphosate (Table 24). About 30 transgenic V1 plants (+) are produced for each construct. The constructs driven by P-CaMVe35S with the duplicated enhancer (pMON45313, pMON59308, and pMON59309) show no substantial difference in the level of expression in leaves as determined by ELISA. The plants are transformed with pMON26140 that contains CP4EPSPS_Syn driven by the P-FMV promoter, these plants show the highest expression level, the expression levels detected from the plants of the test constructs are compared to pMON26140.

TABLE 24 Evaluation of different CP4 expression cassettes in Arabidopsis Plants pMON Promoter/ produced CP4 exp.(%) 45313(CPEPSPS4_Syn) P-CaMVe35S + 82.1 59308(CP4EPSPS_AT) P-CaMVe35S + 79.3 59309(CP4EPSPS_ZM) P-CaMVe35S + 77.3 26140(CP4EPSPS_Syn) P-FMV + 100.0

Example 12

Wheat plants transformed with the new CP4EPSPS polynucleotides are compared for transformation efficiency and CP4EPSPS enzyme expression determined by ELISA (Table 25). The CP4EPSPS_ZM provides at least seven times higher CPEPSPS enzyme expression than CP4EPSPS_AT. The average expression of CP4EPSPS in leaves from wheat plants containing the CP4EPSPS_ZM polynucleotide is about 64% of that found in glyphosate resistant wheat that contains a double cassette construct, pMON30139: P-e35S/I-Hsp70/CP4EPSPS_Nat and P-OsAct1/I-OsAct1/CP4EPSPS_Nat (WO/0022704).

TABLE 25 Performance of different CP4EPSPS polynucleotides in wheat pMON Promoter/Intron TE (%) CP4 Exp. (%) 58400 CP4EPSPS_AT P-e35S/I-Hsp70 0.25 9.2 58401 CP4EPSPS_ZM P-e35S/I-Hsp70 0.35 64.0 30139 CP4EPSPS_Nat P-e35S:P-OsAct1 — 100.0

Example 13

This example serves to illustrate detection of different artificial polynucleotides in transgenic plants, specifically CP4EPSPS_AT and CP4EPSPS_ZM. The other artificial polynucleotides, OsEPSPS_AT, OsEPSPS_ZM, GmEPSPS_GM, ZmEPSPS_ZM, CTP2_AT, CTP2_ZM, Bar1_AT and Bar1_ZM can all be specifically detected in transgenic plants by methods that provide a DNA amplicon or by hybridization of a DNA probe to a plant sample. Those skilled in the art of DNA detection can easily design primer molecules from the artificial polynucleotide sequences provided in the present invention to enable a method that will specifically detect the artificial polynucleotide in a plant sample. The use of a method or a kit that provides DNA primers or probes homologous or complementary to the artificial polynucleotides disclosed herein is an aspect of the present invention.

A DNA detection method (polymerase chain reaction, PCR) is designed to detect the artificial CP4EPSPS polynucleotides in transgenic plants. The unique sets of DNA primers shown in Table 26 are designed to amplify a specific CP4EPSPS polynucleotide and to provide distinctly sized amplicons. The amplicons differ sufficiently in polynucleotide length among the various CP4EPSPS polynucleotides to make easy separation of the amplicons by standard agarose gel electrophoresis. The presence of more than one of the artificial polynucleotides can be detected in a plant by using a multiplex PCR method.

TABLE 26 Sequence of primers used for detection of different CP4 genes in transgenic plants. Primer pair: Gene specificity PCR product (bps) SEQ ID NOs: 24 and 25 CP4EPSPS_AT 938 (940) SEQ ID NOs: 26 and 27 CP4EPSPS_ZM 595 (600) SEQ ID NOs: 28 and 29 CP4EPSPS_Nat 712 (710) SEQ ID NOs: 30 and 31 CP4EPSPS_Syn 443 (440)

DNA primer pairs (Table 26) are used to produce an amplicon diagnostic for a specified CP4EPSPS polynucleotide contained in a transgenic plant. These primer pairs include, but are not limited to SEQ ID NO:24 and SEQ ID NO:25 for the CP4EPSPS_AT polynucleotide; SEQ ID NO:26 and SEQ ID NO:27 for the CP4EPSPS_ZM; SEQ ID NO:28 and SEQ ID NO:29 for CP4EPSPS_Nat and SEQ ID NO:30 and SEQ ID NO:31 CP4EPSPS_Syn polynucleotide molecule. In addition to these primer pairs, any primer pair derived from SEQ ID NO:17 or SEQ ID NO:18 that when used in a DNA amplification reaction produces a DNA amplicon diagnostic for the respective CP4EPSPS polynucleotide is an aspect of the present invention.

The amplification conditions for this analysis is illustrated in Table 27 and Table 28, however, any modification of these conditions including the use of fragments of the DNA molecules of the present invention or complements thereof as primer molecules, which produce an amplicon DNA molecule diagnostic for the artificial polynucleotides described herein is within the ordinary skill of the art. The DNA molecules of the present invention include at least SEQ ID NO:3, SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:7, SEQ ID NO:10, SEQ ID NO:13; SEQ ID NO:14, SEQ ID NO:17, SEQ ID NO:18, SEQ ID NO:21, SEQ ID NO:22, and SEQ ID NO:35. DNA molecules that function as primer molecules in a DNA amplification method to detect the presence of the artificial polynucleotides include, but are not limited to SEQ ID NO:24, SEQ ID NO:25, SEQ ID NO:26, SEQ ID NO:27, SEQ ID NO:28, SEQ ID NO:29, SEQ ID NO:30, and SEQ ID NO:31.

In a method for determining the presence of polynucleotides of the present invention, the analysis of plant tissue DNA extract sample should include a positive control known to contain the artificial polynucleotide, and a negative DNA extract control from a plant that is not transgenic or does not contain the artificial polynucleotide, and a negative control that contains no template in the DNA extract.

Additional DNA primer molecules of sufficient length can be selected from SEQ ID NO:17 and SEQ ID NO:18 and conditions optimized for the production of an amplicon that may differ from the methods shown in Table 27 and Table 28, but result in an amplicon diagnostic for the artificial polynucleotides. The use of these DNA primer sequences homologous or complementary to SEQ ID NO:17 and SEQ ID NO:18 used with or without modifications to the methods of Table 27 and 28 are within the scope of the invention. The assay for the CP4EPSPS_AT and CP4EPSPS_ZM amplicon can be performed by using a Stratagene Robocycler, MJ Engine, Perkin-Elmer 9700, or Eppendorf Mastercycler Gradient thermocycler as shown in Table 28, or by methods and apparatus known to those skilled in the art.

TABLE 27 DNA amplification procedure and reaction mixture for the confirmation of artificial EPSPS polynucleotide CP4EPSPS_AT in corn plants. Step Reagent Amount Comments 1 Nuclease-free water add to final volume of 20 μl — 2 10X reaction buffer 2.0 μl 1X final (with MgCl₂) concentration of buffer, 1.5 mM final concentration of MgCl₂ 3 10 mM solution of dATP, 0.4 μl 200 μM final dCTP, dGTP, and dTTP concentration of each dNTP 4 primer (SEQ ID NO: 24) 0.4 μl 0.2 μM final (resuspended in 1X TE buffer concentration or nuclease-free water to a concentration of 10 μM) 5 primer (SEQ ID NO: 25) 0.4 μl 0.2 μM final (resuspended in 1X TE buffer concentration or nuclease-free water to a concentration of 10 μM) 6 control primer (SEQ ID NO: 32) 0.2 μl 0.1 μM final (resuspended in 1X TE buffer concentration or nuclease-free water to a concentration of 10 μM) 7 control primer (SEQ ID NO: 33) 0.2 μl 0.1 μM final (resuspended in 1X TE buffer concentration or nuclease-free water to a concentration of 10 μM) 8 RNase, DNase free (500 ng/μl) 0.1 μl 50 ng/reaction 9 REDTaq DNA polymerase 1.0 μl (recommended to switch 1 unit/reaction (1 unit/μl) pipets prior to next step) 10 Extracted DNA (template): — Samples to be analyzed individual leaves 10-200 ng of genomic DNA pooled leaves (maximum 200 ng of genomic DNA of 50 leaves/pool) Negative control 50 ng of nontransgenic plant genomic DNA Negative control no template DNA Positive control 5 ng plasmid DNA

TABLE 28 Suggested PCR parameters for different thermocyclers Gently mix and, if needed (no hot top on thermocycler), add 1-2 drops of mineral oil on top of each reaction. Proceed with the PCR in a Stratagene Robocycler, MJ Engine, Perkin-Elmer 9700, or Eppendorf Mastercycler Gradient thermocycler using the following cycling parameters. Cycle No. Settings: Stratagene Robocycler 1 94° C. 3 minutes 38  94° C. 1 minute 60° C. 1 minute 72° C. 1 minute and 30 seconds 1 72° C. 10 minutes Cycle No. Settings: MJ Engine or Perkin-Elmer 9700 1 94° C. 3 minutes 38  94° C. 10 seconds 60° C. 30 seconds 72° C. 1 minute 1 72° C. 10 minutes Cycle No. Settings: Eppendorf Mastercycler Gradient 1 94° C. 3 minutes 38  94° C. 15 seconds 60° C. 15 seconds 72° C. 1 minute 1 72° C. 10 minutes Note: The MJ Engine or Eppendorf Mastercycler Gradient thermocycler should be run in the calculated mode. Run the Perkin-Elmer 9700 thermocycler with the ramp speed set as maximum.

All of the compositions and methods disclosed and claimed herein can be made and executed in light of the present disclosure. While the compositions and methods of this invention have been described, it will be apparent to those of skill in the art that variations may be applied to the compositions and methods and in the steps or in the sequence of steps of the methods described herein without departing from the concept, spirit and scope of the invention. More specifically, it will be apparent that certain agents which are both chemically and physiologically related may be substituted for the agents described herein while the same or similar results would be achieved. All such similar substitutes and modifications apparent to those skilled in the art are deemed to be within the spirit, scope and concept of the invention as defined by the appended claims.

All publications and patent applications cited herein are incorporated by reference in their entirely to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application is specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. 

The invention claimed is:
 1. A method to avoid silencing of a transgene comprising SEQ ID NO:16 operably linked to a polynucleotide encoding a chloroplast transit peptide in transgenic plants comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining a DNA construct comprising an artificial polynucleotide molecule comprising a nucleic acid encoding the EPSPS polypeptide encoded by SEQ ID NO:35 operably linked to a polynucleotide encoding a chloroplast transit peptide; (b) transforming a plant cell with said DNA construct; and (c) regenerating said plant cell into a fertile transgenic plant, wherein said fertile transgenic plant comprises both said artificial polynucleotide and said transgene.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein said polynucleotide encoding the chloroplast transit peptide is SEQ ID NO:13.
 3. An artificial polynucleotide molecule comprising SEQ ID NO:35.
 4. A DNA construct comprising: a promoter molecule that functions in plants, operably linked to said artificial polynucleotide molecule of claim
 3. 5. A plant cell, plant or progeny thereof comprising the DNA construct of claim
 4. 6. The plant or progeny thereof of claim 5, wherein said plant is selected from the group consisting of wheat, corn, rice, soybean, cotton, potato, canola, turf grass, forest trees, grain sorghum, vegetable crops, ornamental plants, forage crops, and fruit crops.
 7. A plant cell comprising at least a first and a second polynucleotide, wherein the first polynucleotide comprises SEQ ID NO:35, and wherein the second polynucleotide comprises SEQ ID NO:16 operably linked to a polynucleotide encoding a chloroplast transit peptide.
 8. A plant or progeny thereof comprising said plant cell of claim
 7. 9. A plant cell, seed, plant or progeny thereof comprising SEQ ID NO:35.
 10. A method of regenerating a fertile transgenic plant comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining said plant cell of claim 7; and (b) regenerating said plant cell into a fertile transgenic plant, wherein said fertile transgenic plant comprises both said polynucleotides. 